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FFL2 Solo Human Part I
Mar. 19th, 2017 04:52 pmOkay, next FFL2 solo report. I'll be tackling the Human this time around. This report is likely going to be a bit more brief than the other three solo FFL2 reports. The reason being that humans and mutants share a lot of mechanics in common. At the most base value, humans gain stats more easily than mutants, with the exception of DEF which they can't build. They don't have abilities, but are able to make use of their MANA stat through spellbooks. There's overall less luck involved with raising them. You don't need to worry about getting just the right ability, just train your stats over the course of countless battles.
As a refresher, the odds of human stat growth - with CONST1 and CONST2 filled in - is (10 + 15 * (EnemyDS -- CharDS)) / 200. This applies to their STR, AGL, and MANA stats. This is a slightly more favorable than what mutants have. Here's the table for equivalent DS level for each basic stat. HP is different, though making a table for every possible value of HP / ((MHP / 26) + 50) is impractical.
So I'm going to do something interesting to make this fun. Maybe several things. But okay! So, when you start a new game, have your main character set and named, and you're ready to go, you can hold down Start or Select as you press A to get into the menus. What's in place of you main party before they're generated?
Well, they're naturally all zeroes in the data. This gets interpretted by the game as party members of the Fungus species, of the Human race, with 0s in all stats, and an inventory full of Hammers. So what you get is a character who looks like a mushroom monster, but is actually like a human in all other respects, complete with the appropriate growth rate. You can keep one of these in your party by switching the main character's position with one of them in the Select menu. Of course, building that character from the ground up is an issue...so here we go!
So here's the solo character of the day, the nameless Fungus. One consequence of this is that you don't get to name the mushroom. When you select your additional party members, the game prompts you to select the class and name of your main character again when you get to the slot you switched it into. So the character has no name this time around. Though that just means I don't have to fight the name boss. I'd go with the female otherwise. She starts off with a bit less STR and HP than the male, but higher AGL and MANA. Plus that flower in her hair is pretty nice.
By the way, one thing I learned from this - the game tracks your characters internally, and the codes/memory addresses that change up a character checks for internal number, not position. Had to punch in a code to petrify the main character. There's also times where the party gets rearranged into this order (such as after defeating Apollo or meeting Dad in Giant's Town), so I had to unpetrify them to move the mushroom into the first slot again. If I didn't do that, I'd have to scroll down to it every time it used a Cure Book in battle.
I took a bunch of the equipment from the other party members - choosing a Human Male, a Human female, and a Robot - and gave it to the Fungus. The most important of these is the Colt from the Robot. It is possible to do this without relying on any excess from the party, but would be much more annoying. So how to gain stats and fight early on?
Simple, by fighting these or Jaguars, hope their Tusk misses like so, and hope the Colt hits - it has fixed accuracy and doesn't rely on AGL. Revive with Odin endlessly until the win is secured. The mushroom gets a HP up after battle. Then do this several more times. Ten, in-fact, each tuned to 5HP for whatever reason. The reason being is that the miniboss at the end, the BabyWyrm, is highly unlikely to miss its Beak. Therefore, the best course of action is to build up the HP needed to survive.
While the total lack of stats would ordinarily make it impossible to deal any damage, being able to use that Colt allows the mushroom to deal damage independent of stats and win those battles in a single shot. If not for that, it would have to use the Bow from the North Cave, dodging two attacks along the way.
There's no point in healing for these grind fights even though it would be possible to take on lone Gangs with enough boosts - I guess the lower current HP does indeed work out to greater odds of HP gain, because the mushroom never once missed out on a gain. With 50HP, that was enough to tank one attack. The question was, would two gunshots be needed to beat it? I had a plan if it was, but...
...it wasn't necessary. The first part of the game completed, with a character built from the ground up, all by itself!
So here's where things stand. Out of the first dungeon with some HP to work with. But the mushroom still has the small problem where all its stats are 0. Is this an issue? Not at all! One of the items I picked up along the way is the Bow. These and martial arts have a damage formula that's independent of stats, and both can boost AGL after battle. The latter in particular are very useful to have, and would be a cornerstone of my strategy for the first few worlds.
The target of choice was a single Gang. It was the most practical to win, due to its low damage allowing the mushroom to deal damage over a period of time. The same 1 Jaguar/1 Spider battle was possible, but it required the same missed attack and two Bow shots to hit.
While the result was a failure, another possibility was offered up. Could've bought one of these, but it was nice to get a freebie. Martial arts are a peculiar weapon type. The short of them is, the more you use them (or more specifically, the less uses the weapon has), the stronger they'll get. The final use of a weapon of this class will unleash triple the damage. Note that Robots will always deal minimal damage with these weapons for whatever reason. As an example with numbers, uses 90-85 of the Punch did 0 damage to Gangs. Use 84 did 4, 83 did 8, 82 did 12, and so on.
Once I had a big enough base of HP to work with (over 100), I moved on into the Hidden Ruins. Here, I mostly ran from everything. Damage could pile up on the mushroom really quickly. The fights I did engage in, I brought along several Cure Potions to heal away the damage they inflicted.
At the end was a Power MAGI, meaning I could theoretically have the mushroom start gaining stats in STR (it already had a few points of AGL). However, the boost it offered was so minimal, and I just wanted to keep on plowing through after getting back to this coming back to this after about a year, that I decided to hold off for the time being.
The Rhino massacred the mushroom in a single blow until I added even more HP, after which it was the one that was massacred by a high-powered Punch.
The next world brings about the next martial art for our grappling mushroom: Kicks are stronger than Punches. I bought one and went back to the Base World to power it up.
A new thing I learned about the game, on that note: Ki has extra dialogue if you return to her after finishing Base World, but before defeating Ashura.
I upgraded the mushroom's equipment and moved on to Ashura's Tower. If you'll recall my solo monster, you'll remember how Beetles suck on offense, which obstructed me in the painful early goings. Here I turned it to my advantage. They couldn't damage the mushroom, and I could use them to farm money and lower the uses on the martial arts.
This tower also had several stat potions including a Power potion. However, I have a specific way in mind of raising STR beyond the early levels. So I decided to sit on these as I usually do.
The strategy on Ashura was simple. Though he could massacre me with 6-Arms, if he decided not to, I could murder him in return. I had to reset and go back down the tower the first time, however. I'd saved up a Punch on its last use to demolish Ashura, but it only did 800~, with the new god having 900HP. Ashura could two-shot the mushroom, so I either needed more HP or more power. Grinding the Kick down to a single use did the trick.
The Giant's World had things like single Amoebas which were certainly nice for statbuilding, but also had this. The Geta footwear gives +5 to STR. But no, this - nor the Giant equipment - still isn't what I had in mind for raising strength. And remember, it's the actual value that's used in determining stat growth, not the base value. Having those on can harm my efforts.
Speaking of the Giant equipment, by selling off most of the weapons I accumulated, I found myself able to afford some of it. The armor is what I really want though, and what I need to save up for. The gauntlets are free in the next world, and I can also get a free helmet in Venus' World.
Some of the money had to be spent though, because I needed to make this purchase before taking on the Phagocyts. They appear in way too large a group for a human to properly deal with (4-8), but this fixed-damage weapon makes things go relatively smoothly. Even so, I needed to luck out in them not paralyzing. I was facing the full 8 of them for money purposes. Just took a bit more time for them not to land paralysis or more than one Dissolve, and that was that.
By the way, I decided this is a no MAGI variant, at least for now. Just to make things interesting in some regards.
Apollo's World brought forth a lot of single encounters on the overworld. I took this opportunity to get the mushroom some AGL. As I learned and tested in the previous run, I need to be careful not to exceed 40, for fighting Apollo way later on in the game.
There really isn't too much to say about the world itself otherwise. I'd earned enough for the Giant Armor halfway through to Dunatis, so I went and bought that before fighting it. Two high-powered Punches dropped Dunatis and I mostly ran from everything else in the dungeons. In the Bright Cave, a couple of desirable pickups awaited. The first being the Giant gauntlets I was talking about. The second...
The Revenge Sword!! I've gone over this wepaon before, and using it does give the potential to increase STR without needing anything in that stat. So I stripped down the mushroom and had it do its thing. Fighting single enemies without armor, they would hit it for a ton of damage survivable via massive HP, which would then be sent back twofold. I got it up to 10 STR with the weapon, saving 30 uses of Revenge for later.
I overlooked something in regards to raising STR by the way, but I'll get to that when it's relevant. It's nice to finally give that sword a time to shine, at least.
So how to proceed from here, after getting a Long Sword for traditional STR-building purposes? Well, the mushroom's STR is the equivalent of DS-2, so I want to be fighting DS-3 monsters for a faster increase (instead of these things). Maybe DS-4. The problem is without MAGI, I'm just poking them for feeble damage. Obviously not enough to last through a prolonged fight. I could fight weaker things like this, but would prefer better odds than 1/20.
The answer is to use martial arts to soften the enemy up before going in with the sword. I couldn't fight the DS-4 monsters in Apollo's World right away, but getting 14 STR in Giant's World did let me do so. My goal was 24 STR, where the STR stat becomes DS-4. From there, I could freely have the mushroom equip the Giant gear without penalty of making it harder to raise stats in this world.
With martial arts giving easy AGL and Revenge giving a baseline for STR, only one stat that can be raised on humans remains at zero. Raising MANA in this MAGI-less challenge will have to wait until the very lategame acquirement of the Rune Axe, a STR-based weapon that helps raise that stat...
...except it doesn't require that at all. Hitting an enemy with an elemental weakness does damage anyway, regardless of the character's stats. MANA is nice to have on a human and they actually gain it just as fast as mutants. It's just that they need to use spellbooks to raise that stat. Yes, it is very possible to have a magical human, although for the sake of diversity, I'll mostly have the mushroom here be a physical fighter in contrast with Toma. Though I'll be getting some for defensive and Cure purposes.
The initial punching bag of choice were those Amoebas. These were single enemies that were conveniently weak to a free Thunder book I'd acquired. They weren't the easiest choice, of course - they could restore their health and deal heavy damage with Dissolve - but they were still fairly good to get a foothold and being DS-3 gave the mushroom levels relatively quickly.
Base spellbook damage is equal to MANA*10, so I was able to move onto grinding in Apollo's World relatively quickly. And I'll go over the end result in the next bit.
Next | Index
As a refresher, the odds of human stat growth - with CONST1 and CONST2 filled in - is (10 + 15 * (EnemyDS -- CharDS)) / 200. This applies to their STR, AGL, and MANA stats. This is a slightly more favorable than what mutants have. Here's the table for equivalent DS level for each basic stat. HP is different, though making a table for every possible value of HP / ((MHP / 26) + 50) is impractical.
So I'm going to do something interesting to make this fun. Maybe several things. But okay! So, when you start a new game, have your main character set and named, and you're ready to go, you can hold down Start or Select as you press A to get into the menus. What's in place of you main party before they're generated?
Well, they're naturally all zeroes in the data. This gets interpretted by the game as party members of the Fungus species, of the Human race, with 0s in all stats, and an inventory full of Hammers. So what you get is a character who looks like a mushroom monster, but is actually like a human in all other respects, complete with the appropriate growth rate. You can keep one of these in your party by switching the main character's position with one of them in the Select menu. Of course, building that character from the ground up is an issue...so here we go!
So here's the solo character of the day, the nameless Fungus. One consequence of this is that you don't get to name the mushroom. When you select your additional party members, the game prompts you to select the class and name of your main character again when you get to the slot you switched it into. So the character has no name this time around. Though that just means I don't have to fight the name boss. I'd go with the female otherwise. She starts off with a bit less STR and HP than the male, but higher AGL and MANA. Plus that flower in her hair is pretty nice.
By the way, one thing I learned from this - the game tracks your characters internally, and the codes/memory addresses that change up a character checks for internal number, not position. Had to punch in a code to petrify the main character. There's also times where the party gets rearranged into this order (such as after defeating Apollo or meeting Dad in Giant's Town), so I had to unpetrify them to move the mushroom into the first slot again. If I didn't do that, I'd have to scroll down to it every time it used a Cure Book in battle.
I took a bunch of the equipment from the other party members - choosing a Human Male, a Human female, and a Robot - and gave it to the Fungus. The most important of these is the Colt from the Robot. It is possible to do this without relying on any excess from the party, but would be much more annoying. So how to gain stats and fight early on?
Simple, by fighting these or Jaguars, hope their Tusk misses like so, and hope the Colt hits - it has fixed accuracy and doesn't rely on AGL. Revive with Odin endlessly until the win is secured. The mushroom gets a HP up after battle. Then do this several more times. Ten, in-fact, each tuned to 5HP for whatever reason. The reason being is that the miniboss at the end, the BabyWyrm, is highly unlikely to miss its Beak. Therefore, the best course of action is to build up the HP needed to survive.
While the total lack of stats would ordinarily make it impossible to deal any damage, being able to use that Colt allows the mushroom to deal damage independent of stats and win those battles in a single shot. If not for that, it would have to use the Bow from the North Cave, dodging two attacks along the way.
There's no point in healing for these grind fights even though it would be possible to take on lone Gangs with enough boosts - I guess the lower current HP does indeed work out to greater odds of HP gain, because the mushroom never once missed out on a gain. With 50HP, that was enough to tank one attack. The question was, would two gunshots be needed to beat it? I had a plan if it was, but...
...it wasn't necessary. The first part of the game completed, with a character built from the ground up, all by itself!
So here's where things stand. Out of the first dungeon with some HP to work with. But the mushroom still has the small problem where all its stats are 0. Is this an issue? Not at all! One of the items I picked up along the way is the Bow. These and martial arts have a damage formula that's independent of stats, and both can boost AGL after battle. The latter in particular are very useful to have, and would be a cornerstone of my strategy for the first few worlds.
The target of choice was a single Gang. It was the most practical to win, due to its low damage allowing the mushroom to deal damage over a period of time. The same 1 Jaguar/1 Spider battle was possible, but it required the same missed attack and two Bow shots to hit.
While the result was a failure, another possibility was offered up. Could've bought one of these, but it was nice to get a freebie. Martial arts are a peculiar weapon type. The short of them is, the more you use them (or more specifically, the less uses the weapon has), the stronger they'll get. The final use of a weapon of this class will unleash triple the damage. Note that Robots will always deal minimal damage with these weapons for whatever reason. As an example with numbers, uses 90-85 of the Punch did 0 damage to Gangs. Use 84 did 4, 83 did 8, 82 did 12, and so on.
Once I had a big enough base of HP to work with (over 100), I moved on into the Hidden Ruins. Here, I mostly ran from everything. Damage could pile up on the mushroom really quickly. The fights I did engage in, I brought along several Cure Potions to heal away the damage they inflicted.
At the end was a Power MAGI, meaning I could theoretically have the mushroom start gaining stats in STR (it already had a few points of AGL). However, the boost it offered was so minimal, and I just wanted to keep on plowing through after getting back to this coming back to this after about a year, that I decided to hold off for the time being.
The Rhino massacred the mushroom in a single blow until I added even more HP, after which it was the one that was massacred by a high-powered Punch.
The next world brings about the next martial art for our grappling mushroom: Kicks are stronger than Punches. I bought one and went back to the Base World to power it up.
A new thing I learned about the game, on that note: Ki has extra dialogue if you return to her after finishing Base World, but before defeating Ashura.
I upgraded the mushroom's equipment and moved on to Ashura's Tower. If you'll recall my solo monster, you'll remember how Beetles suck on offense, which obstructed me in the painful early goings. Here I turned it to my advantage. They couldn't damage the mushroom, and I could use them to farm money and lower the uses on the martial arts.
This tower also had several stat potions including a Power potion. However, I have a specific way in mind of raising STR beyond the early levels. So I decided to sit on these as I usually do.
The strategy on Ashura was simple. Though he could massacre me with 6-Arms, if he decided not to, I could murder him in return. I had to reset and go back down the tower the first time, however. I'd saved up a Punch on its last use to demolish Ashura, but it only did 800~, with the new god having 900HP. Ashura could two-shot the mushroom, so I either needed more HP or more power. Grinding the Kick down to a single use did the trick.
The Giant's World had things like single Amoebas which were certainly nice for statbuilding, but also had this. The Geta footwear gives +5 to STR. But no, this - nor the Giant equipment - still isn't what I had in mind for raising strength. And remember, it's the actual value that's used in determining stat growth, not the base value. Having those on can harm my efforts.
Speaking of the Giant equipment, by selling off most of the weapons I accumulated, I found myself able to afford some of it. The armor is what I really want though, and what I need to save up for. The gauntlets are free in the next world, and I can also get a free helmet in Venus' World.
Some of the money had to be spent though, because I needed to make this purchase before taking on the Phagocyts. They appear in way too large a group for a human to properly deal with (4-8), but this fixed-damage weapon makes things go relatively smoothly. Even so, I needed to luck out in them not paralyzing. I was facing the full 8 of them for money purposes. Just took a bit more time for them not to land paralysis or more than one Dissolve, and that was that.
By the way, I decided this is a no MAGI variant, at least for now. Just to make things interesting in some regards.
Apollo's World brought forth a lot of single encounters on the overworld. I took this opportunity to get the mushroom some AGL. As I learned and tested in the previous run, I need to be careful not to exceed 40, for fighting Apollo way later on in the game.
There really isn't too much to say about the world itself otherwise. I'd earned enough for the Giant Armor halfway through to Dunatis, so I went and bought that before fighting it. Two high-powered Punches dropped Dunatis and I mostly ran from everything else in the dungeons. In the Bright Cave, a couple of desirable pickups awaited. The first being the Giant gauntlets I was talking about. The second...
The Revenge Sword!! I've gone over this wepaon before, and using it does give the potential to increase STR without needing anything in that stat. So I stripped down the mushroom and had it do its thing. Fighting single enemies without armor, they would hit it for a ton of damage survivable via massive HP, which would then be sent back twofold. I got it up to 10 STR with the weapon, saving 30 uses of Revenge for later.
I overlooked something in regards to raising STR by the way, but I'll get to that when it's relevant. It's nice to finally give that sword a time to shine, at least.
So how to proceed from here, after getting a Long Sword for traditional STR-building purposes? Well, the mushroom's STR is the equivalent of DS-2, so I want to be fighting DS-3 monsters for a faster increase (instead of these things). Maybe DS-4. The problem is without MAGI, I'm just poking them for feeble damage. Obviously not enough to last through a prolonged fight. I could fight weaker things like this, but would prefer better odds than 1/20.
The answer is to use martial arts to soften the enemy up before going in with the sword. I couldn't fight the DS-4 monsters in Apollo's World right away, but getting 14 STR in Giant's World did let me do so. My goal was 24 STR, where the STR stat becomes DS-4. From there, I could freely have the mushroom equip the Giant gear without penalty of making it harder to raise stats in this world.
With martial arts giving easy AGL and Revenge giving a baseline for STR, only one stat that can be raised on humans remains at zero. Raising MANA in this MAGI-less challenge will have to wait until the very lategame acquirement of the Rune Axe, a STR-based weapon that helps raise that stat...
...except it doesn't require that at all. Hitting an enemy with an elemental weakness does damage anyway, regardless of the character's stats. MANA is nice to have on a human and they actually gain it just as fast as mutants. It's just that they need to use spellbooks to raise that stat. Yes, it is very possible to have a magical human, although for the sake of diversity, I'll mostly have the mushroom here be a physical fighter in contrast with Toma. Though I'll be getting some for defensive and Cure purposes.
The initial punching bag of choice were those Amoebas. These were single enemies that were conveniently weak to a free Thunder book I'd acquired. They weren't the easiest choice, of course - they could restore their health and deal heavy damage with Dissolve - but they were still fairly good to get a foothold and being DS-3 gave the mushroom levels relatively quickly.
Base spellbook damage is equal to MANA*10, so I was able to move onto grinding in Apollo's World relatively quickly. And I'll go over the end result in the next bit.
Next | Index
