FFL2 Solo Robot Part III

Edo brought forth several pieces of useful and/or interesting equipment. The first of those in the first image being the best. Tank has a base damage of 850. It makes the Vulcan Cannon (660) also first buyable in Edo almost completely worthless. Laser meanwhile hits a single enemy for 350 damage...except this damage can't be reduced by anything. Missile meanwhile hits all enemies groups on-screen. However, it's held by its paltry 300 base damage.

Also present was Jyudo - the strongest purchasable martial art which could also be bought in the normal shops which give a solid +26 to AGL and 117HP. Dragon Helmets were also there. These give +26 DEF and 117HP to a robot, up from 18 DEF/81HP that Giant equipment gives. It's the best helmet for a human/mutant and still good for a robot. The other "ultimate defensive equipment" (Arthur Armor, Ninja Gauntlet, Dragon Shield, Defend Sword) give the same bonuses, but you can purchase these and earlier than you can some of the others. They're not the best - Parasuit holds that honor, but you can't purchase those and nothing drops them.


The new Tank handily demolished the Hatamotos blocking the bridge in Edo, and everything else in this world for that matter.


One more piece of equipment. Catclaw is the strongest AGL-based weapon in the game, with a base damage of AGL*13. AGL equipment is really nice for robots to have and make for one of their best builds, although humans and mutants can quite well focus solely on AGL weapons too.


I proceeded through the world as usual, picking up an extra Tank on the ship in the process. One thng that didn't occur to me until this playthrough - okay. So you can grind cash easily in Echigoya's basement off the goons you can talk to, right? Fight big groups of Knights and/or Gazers and go crazy. The only problem with that is how the shop with all its useful goodies closes at that point.


Well, you can also run into those groups in Edo Castle. You can't well enter it at that point, but you can hang around outside the gate and fight enemies on the outside. Ignore the fact that this was taken after the events as per Hana's dialogue. I thought I took a picture of her at the relevant time but didn't, so I had to make do.


I used the funds from all this to purchase a ton of Dragon Helmets, because being even more invincible is fun. I threw in a Dragon Shield too for good measure. The other things not being shown here are a Tank and the O-Pa/Po which always takes up a slot.


Of course, that's hardly enough to suffice, so I decided to grind up even more cash. A battle against a group of 8 would net 3024GP, plus the chance to drop an item worth 8500GP if the enemies were Knights. I also gave Mic a pair of Jyudos for this grind. These allowed him to outspeed everything and get kills before the enemies could move, which was pretty much needed for the Gazers lest they potetially wreck him with Beam, and still saving time against the Knights so I didn't have to watch a bunch of ineffective attacks. So how much did I get?


How about as much as I can carry? Yes, I do have something in mind with all this, just like I did with four Robots.


There was a slightly weird money glitch when I defeated Echigoya and his nine Hatamotos, but it didn't have a gameplay effect.


Two useful pieces of equipment were in Castle Edo proper. The Ninja Gauntlet I've been over before, a useful piece of equipment with O-Weapon that gives the same defensive bonuses as the Dragon Helmets. And the Samurai Bow is the best of the ranged weapons in the game, hitting groups with a base damage of 1000. It never misses, and gives an AGL bonus of +26.


Have a damage comparison of the two against Sho-gun, who was pathetic as usual. Magante is not, so...


SYSTEM CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGE!!!!

Mic has on only two pieces of armor: the Dragon Armor and Ninja Gauntlet. Everything else is dedicated to raising his AGL: the Samurai Bow and Jyudos giving +26 each, and the Catclaw giving +22. Throw in the Speed MAGI for good measure. So offense won't be a problem with all this, but what about defense?


Well, all that AGL doesn't just tilt the odds of turn order in Mic's favor or increase his damage. The stat also goes into determining dodge chance. With Katana negated this way and Thunder doing nothing becuase of the Dragon Armor, only two attacks were of any relevance.


The first being Vulcan. Remember, it's a fixed-damage never-miss weapon in the same series as SMG, with a base damage of 660. This is why I have Mic with the Ninja Gauntlet - this would be doing twice as much damage otherwise. I could've negated it too by going to a full-on defensive strat, but the big issue is Tornado, which would've done over 500 damage to Mic and very quickly decimated him. Therefore, I chose to just try killing him ASAP.


The Catclaw (which really doesn't look like one in this version) did a really good job of that. I actually won on the first try without ever seeing Tornado.


The goodies I chose to loot from the Nasty Dungeon, at least for now, were the Parasuit (best DEF boost and some nice immunities), the Arthur Armor (also a good DEF boost), Selfix (restores 10% of a robot's HP at the end of every round) and the Gungnir.


I had two plans for Odin. The first of these was the same as I used on Magnate - kill Odin quickly before he can do any serious damage with Gungnir. This wasn't too bad to pull off. Mic could survive a shot, so he just needed to not it twice in the three rounds he got. The OdinCrows also needed to not use Tornado, but they seem to rarely use it anyway.


The second was a defensive strategy - load down with all the defensive gear, as well as Selfix. Use Gungnir for offense.


With all this on, Odin's own Gungnir was doing manageable damage. He'd have to constantly be using it to keep up with Mic's regeneration. Take out the OdinCrows first due to the threat of Tornado. Ignore the Sleipnir - it couldn't do anything at all.


I alternated the two strategies due to wanting to farm another Gungnir drop. The latter strategy was more consistent, but kind of annoying. Especially with having to scroll to attack Odin every time. I could go after Sleipnir too, but not doing this made it so that Odin's Cures occasionally went towards it instead of him, reducing the chances of being owned by running out of use of Gungnir. In the end, the quicker but riskier first strategy got me the goods.

So with all that out of the way, it's time for this challenge to get serious. Seriously insane, that is.

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FFL2 Solo Robot Part IV

Closing in on the end of the game. As a comment, I find it kind of disappointing you never really get a chance to use the Masmune MAGI. It's a solidly strong physical attack that blows through all defenses to deal just over 500 damage each time. It even helps boost STR after battle, if you have a human who needs it at this point. But the next world and next boss take away all your MAGI.


Minion doesn't even have O-Weapon or any encompassing variant, so normal physicals are often better. And indeed, against Mic's fury he was droped very quickly. This was without Speed MAGI, even.

I didn't do too much in the Final Town, just went right for the Final Dungeon. All I picked up along the way for the time being was the XCalibr.


But WarMach proved to be quite the difficult fight. Toma may have been able to accumulate enough DEF to resist Bash, but Mic could not - not without compromising his offense, anyway. And he needed a lot, because Missile punched through his defenses, as did NukeBomb. Depleting his 10000HP before he could deplete Mic's HP was a hard task - he had only a single safe move, ParaNail.

So what in the world am I going to do here? Even Selfix doesn't do much to help out here - WarMach can easily outdamage the regeneration, especially with NukeBomb.


SYSTEM CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-it what? Yes, that's right. A Stone Book. Magicbot. Robots may have 0 MANA without use of MAGI or remake-only equipment, but this applies to WarMach jusr as much as it does Mic. And status attacks such as this one only have their chances to land modified based on MANA. They can still hit with none, the odds just aren't that great. But 0 MANA vs. 0 MANA puts Mic and WarMach on even ground.


I did have to walk all the way out to get the spell from Venus' World. Because, like I said, I didn't do much in Final Town. Didn't even get a Door. But I did that and came back. Lost on the first attempt, but it landed right away on the second go at the fight, and that was the end of that.


Of course, this isn't the last I've heard of the game throwing out brutally overpowered attacks. And unlike the previous fight, there's no way around this one. Or is there?


Remember a foreboding remark I made in my four robots playthrough? There's a notable bug in the game involving robots and martial arts. Ordinarily, these weapons are only good for raising a robot's AGL - they do minimal damage with each use on a robot, likely acting as if they have max uses at all times. They don't get halved when equipped either, so you can't use a robot to easily slash their uses apart. For that matter, they don't get replenished when a robot stays at an inn, either.

However, if a robot uses a martial art up completely, it gets left with 0 uses instead of disappearing, just like anything else a robot might equip. If you from there select it and switch its position in the menu, it will vanish from the robot's inventory. But the stat boosts will remain.


As so.

The reason for grinding all that money up in Edo was to afford all the Jyudos necessary to make this work: they cost 36000GP a shot. I'd bought a few ahead of time even aside from the ones I was using to buff Mic's AGL. Every one of these would give Mic +26 AGL and 116 HP.

The goal is around 5000HP, to heal 500HP a turn and provide enough buffer. But what's the best target for Mic to sit around against while wittling down these things' uses?


It's our good friend, the Hermit! Even this solo can get help from him, I guess. This is a fixed encounter with only a single enemy in it. It's weak enough for Mic to comfortably defend against most of its attacks with only a Ninja Gauntlet and a Parasuit. But it's also tough enough so it won't be dying to the martial arts. Even against a robot who can't effectively use them - things like the monsters in Apollo's World, for example - can take damage from this which eventually will kill them.


So onward I went. I swapped emulators here to take advantage of RAM watch to see how my max HP was getting along - even though it can easily go beyond 999, the game doesn't show you how much there is. It was also use of keeping track of Mic's exact AGL. Speaking of which, yes - it is a single byte, so it went beyond 255 and wrapped around to 0 a few times over the course of this grind.


I also grabbed an extra Jyudo from the Nasty Dungeon, as well as a Karate from there (its nonpurchasable older brother, +32 AGL and 144HP) and the Final Dungeon. And although this only hit me towards the end of the grind...DOORBOT!! Yes, even consumable items such as the Door can be put on a robot, and recharged at an inn and reused.


Eventually, I ran out of money. But what I'd built up was sufficient - not exactly 5000, but it's close enough, once you factor in equipment that'll be in-place where the Jyudos were. It even put Mic's AGL in a very nice spot. If I had grinded it to 5000 from there, the stat would've wrapped an additional time and left him with almost none, making me grind even more. Not what I really want to do.


With all that HP and Selfix on, Apollo never had a hope of killing Mic. I could actually try fighting him if I really wanted - Catclaws doing 1272 damage with all this AGL - but Mic couldn't deplete his HP enough before his death naturally triggered.


Heh.

Also at around this point, forget if it was before or after I defeated Apollo, I also sent Mic into the Nasty Dungeon one last time to grab a variety of items that would come in handy for the final descent.


One enemy of note when going down was the Plague. Also known as Cyber Virus in the Japanese version, these are indeed capable of using a move called ComVirus, a move that does MANA*13 damage to robots. Which works out to a lot and would one-shot Mic if I hadn't broke his HP stat. They can also multiply - at the start of this fight there was only one, but there were three by the time I got around to them.

Yes, I was fighting a few random encounters along the way. It wasn't too bad. I did eventually take to my usual strategy of saving to avoid them though, because it was just taking so long.


Mic had no problem fighting a large quantity of TianLungs. As long as they didn't all use Tornado, I was in the clear.


Did have to fight less Fenrirs, though - that or change equipment to be more aggressively offensive. They're seemingly more prone to using Tornado, and Mic couldn't keep up with the regeneration if they all decided to use it. And their own regeneration - 250HP a turn - made damage like this very chip. Still, his own chipping away was constant, and Fenrir's was not. So even though it took many rounds of combat, Mic was just not dying.

Now with all this HP, defeating Arsenal is trivial. Only its final form can potentially outdamage the regeneration from Selfix, and even then, it won't because its damage is random. But of course, that's not what we came all this way to see. So during that second trip down to Nasty Dungeon, I naturally grabbed the Hyper.


Except I didn't grab it. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! CHAINSAWS, EVERYONE!!

It took a bit to get this. But with the easy Haniwa encounter trick, I could encounter it mostly at will. It was just like when I tried to farm P-Blast for Toma, only more lenient. How I got this was: after a restart, I instantly encounter 3 Bl. Belts and 5 Paladins. I win the fight, using XCalibr on the former then the latter. Next fight is 3 Bl. Belts, 3 Paladins, and 2 Giants. I win, killing in order the Giants, the Bl. Belts, then the Paladins. Next is 3 Scyllas and 4 Moaners. I soft reset here. The next encounter is the Haniwa which I Chainsaw down.


Mic is rocking out with 192 STR, and about as much AGL. This is as much STR as he can achieve while still using the Seven Sword, which gives no bonuses aside from 144 to HP. Glass Sword, Sun Sword, XCalibr, and Gungnir all give +32 to STR. There's just enough of these in the game to naturally boost Mic's stats up to where farming drops from Paladins was unnecessary. Chainsaw worked on Haniwa because he had 202 STR (it giving +10 itself), more than the 172 STR needed to overcome it - for targets with O-Weapon like Haniwa (with 90 STR), your STR needs to be higher than 2*(DEF-4). Sadly for his hilarity doesn't work on most bosses regardless of STR. Otherwise yes, I totally would've cut Arsenal in half.

But we'll just have to settle for murder by the numbers. Seven Sword, by the way, has a base damage of STR*15, and indeed, rolls to hit seven times.


Even with this ridiculous weapon, you still need to get through the cannons. But this wasn't a problem - Mic could cleanly one-shot them all. The Smashers weren't a factor either regardless of HP, not with all that AGL to dodge them. And now...!


















Hell yeah. B-B-B-BODIED. This is still short of a one-hit kill, but it's entirely possible to destroy it before any smashers are launched.


Too bad you can't get more STR than that, though. Otherwise, a one-hit kill would indeed be possible. Having 255 STR - which I believe is technically possible through some bugs outside the scope of this variant - would just make it capital murder.

All done. What else is there really to say about this one? Mic demonstrated complete dominance from start to finish. Of course, if it wasn't for that bug with martial arts, a solo robot making it through in this version of the game is impossible, barring absurd luck with the whip trick. It's only because of Apollo and Arsenal and their inability to heal in-battle aside from Selfix and X-Cures. I'm not even sure if it would work in the remake, because I believe that version fixes robots being able to pump their stats way beyond 99. If I'm mistaken, even then - they'd need a lot of those mana circuits to survive Apollo and Arsenal, because there's no martial arts bug to fall back on in that version.

I was actually a bit concerned about Magnate. There's no defense against his Tornado, and so you have to rely on winning before he can kill you. I was never scared of Odin, but WarMach proved more dangerous than I thought - that 120 STR hurts!! Still, Stone working as a robot got me through without incident. And solos never need deal with random encounters, aside from that one particular one in Edo Castle and the Central Shrine encounters, but the former are manageable and you can save abuse by the latter. So dangerous enemies like the eyeballs and slimes weren't a problem.


And so the family heads out to find the Lost Ark actually the Three Imperial Treasures in the Japanese version. Will I follow them into the next game where they're actually seen looking for them? We'll see.

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