FFMQ Low% Part I
Oct. 16th, 2017 01:59 amGoing back to Mystic Quest for a new variant, one that was suggested to me a while back - Low%. This is exactly as it sounds, and similar in concept to the FF1 Capitalists challenge. I have to get as little as possible when advancing through the game. Recall that big damage in particular comes from magic, which is all optional...and you can see how you may run into problems in the later stages.
In some senses, this is therefore similar in some respects to the Cheerleader challenge I did. However, instead of only being able to act as healing and defensive support, the player character - B because that uses as few characters as possible and therefore fits for getting as little as possible - is free to do whatever within the constraints of the variant allowing him options. Furthermore, I will have full control of the partner character in this challenge. Which is good, because B will be dead weight offensively in many situations. As a bit of an extra twist to make this slightly more interesting, I'll also be abstaining from opening regular treasure chests - if I want consumables, I'll have to buy them.

The only notable part about the first portion of the game was not picking up the Cure spell. This would nonetheless affect the entire rest of the playthrough. Instead of B being able to heal himself, he had to rely on his partner for healing - since Cure Potions and their fixed 1/4 max health restoration certainly weren't reliable. Luckily, every partner character in the game comes with at least the Life spell, and casting it in-battle acts as a full HP and status heal, regardless of current condition.
It also by the way acts as an instant death spell on any non-undead enemy you cast it on. So just to be a jerk, I kicked Minotaur in the groin with this.

The second partner character brings forth a minor problem. Tristam's main means of offense is through Ninja Stars, a limited resource given my self-inflicted additional rule of not opening treasure chests to replenish his supply. This meant I had a pseudo time limit on beating the Bone Dungeon - if Tristam ran out of Ninja Stars, that would be it. His offense would be crippled (attacking with his bare hands for minimal damage), and I'd have to rely on grinding B up to extreme levels to get by. That's just not practical. Yet.
That said, the limitation wasn't too terrible. With him starting off with a full stock of 99, it simply meant I couldn't grind. Unfortunately this was going to affect my performance against the boss of the dungeon...thinking about it in retrospect, I probably should've done some more grinding with Kaeli before losing her.

Becuase of my additional limitation of not even opening regular treasure chests, this was an endurance test of a dungeon. I wanted to get to Flamerus with as many of Tristam's Life charges as possible, leading to several deaths along the way. Unfortunately I just couldn't avoid using them, and so he had exactly zero left by the time I got there. Well, shit.

Partially because of this, partially because of being too stubborn to redo it, and partially because of just genuine difficulty under my circumstances, Flamerus Rex was an incredibly difficult opponent. The offense was no issue - Tristam had a healthy enough supply of Ninja Stars, and B's Bombs did acceptable damage as well. No, the problem was winning before dying. Flamerus does fairly decent damage with its attacks, and has enough HP so that Tristam would eventually run out of Life Spells if he kept using them. Furthermore, it can use Rip Earth to damage both at the same time. One of the issues of Life in battle compared to Cure is being exclusively single-target.

With all that coming together, this was actually one of the hardest fights in the challenge! Though at core, it was just down to attacking and repeating the fight until all the bounces went my way. It took several attempts, but thankfully, it did come to pass.

With that awful experience out of the way, I could move onto the next region. B was able to replenish his bombs here. While he couldn't really afford to do so just yet, with what was to come affording any refills was easy.

With the next partner character also being limited in their basic attack ammunition after a short while, I decided it would be best if I got the needed grinding out of the way right then and there. Don't want to end up in that situation again. Grinding would be a necessity for this challenge, and in that sense it's kind of the opposite of Low Level. There I had (almost) unrestricted access to anything in the game, but with minimal levels. Here I can and will grind as much as I please, to make up for the deficiency of not being able to use anything but what's mandatory.

This may have been excessive, but with Phoebe switching to a weapon that requires ammunition, I'd rather get as many levels as possible ahead of time before she has to worry about running out. The bed in Foresta is a free source of healing, the only restriction being that it naturally can't be used mid-dungeon. I would return there several times over the course of this grind in order to refresh Phoebe's healing and magic stocks.
I went up to level 15 as shown there before stopping. By the way, as a demonstration of how strong bombs are, even with all these levels, they (with 63 attack power) were still outclassing the strongest weapon B had. It won't be like this forever even for this challenge, but still, they were a weapon of choice for this challenge. I did reset and give Phoebe her proper statistics after this - I kept them on Tristam's so she'd have just a bit more attack, but for the world as a whole, her own natural water resistance in particular was more useful. Except I actually didn't do this? Did I seriously go through the whole way including Ice Golem without water resistance?!

The cave itself was mostly a non-issue. I did try to conserve Phoebe's arrows throughout, this time far more successfully due to the presence of her magic and B's increased levels. With Thunder and several charges saved up, I could easily wipe the floor with Squidite.

With the Wintry Cave completed, I had the chance to purchase Cure potions. I am allowing myself to buy consumable items, if only because going without bombs, B's primary damage source for a good chunk of the game, might push this into unreasonable territory. However, I chose to forgo this for three reasons. One, I might want said bombs instead. Two, Seeds are more beneficial in the end. And three, Cure potions are of questionable help, as mentioned restoring only a fixed quarter of the target's max HP.
There really isn't too much to say about Falls Basin. It isn't a long enough dungeon for things to really matter, and the myriad of Desert Hags and Lamias went down easily enough. Neither was the boss that big of an issue, going down to several spells and some bombs. This earlier part of the game comes before the low% restriction can really come into play. The only major difference was, as mentioned, not having the Cure spell. Which simply meant Phoebe had to do healing, as opposed to B being able to do so while she continued attacking. And when he didn't need to, he still had bombs available for use. And would get the Jumbo Bomb upgrade after the boss fight...

At the very end, Snow Crab was also a non-issue. Fire burned it down very effectively, and B could contribute just as well/keep piling the damage on while Phoebe healed due to its axe weakness.
One thing to note about Falls Basin - you can't return to it after you leave...through the north. If you leave through the south you can return, but can't advance on the map either until you exit through the north. And if you fail to pick up the Heal spell that's right there in plain sight, you can't ever get it.

The Ice Pyramid is the first really long dungeon of the game. It's where not getting those three Seeds in the ordinary chest in the Bone Dungeon came into play for the first and only time. I needed to play as conservatively as I could throughout. Some of the worst enemies because of this were these things. If an enemy in the battle was reduced to low HP - including they themselves - they would respond by casting Cure. Very obnoxious to say the least. The ideal way to deal with them was landing a paralysis via the Cat Claw, stunning them so they had no chance to cast the spell.

Though it was a struggle to get there, the result of this all was the Ice Golem being relatively easy. B tossed Jumbo Bombs as his strongest attacking option, and Phoebe attacked with Fire and healed. Didn't take much effort to win at all with B's high HP count.
Leveling and power saw me through Aquaria after a rough early game. Will the difficulty carry over to to the rest of the game, or will things still be all right? Click ahead to find out.
Next | Index
In some senses, this is therefore similar in some respects to the Cheerleader challenge I did. However, instead of only being able to act as healing and defensive support, the player character - B because that uses as few characters as possible and therefore fits for getting as little as possible - is free to do whatever within the constraints of the variant allowing him options. Furthermore, I will have full control of the partner character in this challenge. Which is good, because B will be dead weight offensively in many situations. As a bit of an extra twist to make this slightly more interesting, I'll also be abstaining from opening regular treasure chests - if I want consumables, I'll have to buy them.

The only notable part about the first portion of the game was not picking up the Cure spell. This would nonetheless affect the entire rest of the playthrough. Instead of B being able to heal himself, he had to rely on his partner for healing - since Cure Potions and their fixed 1/4 max health restoration certainly weren't reliable. Luckily, every partner character in the game comes with at least the Life spell, and casting it in-battle acts as a full HP and status heal, regardless of current condition.
It also by the way acts as an instant death spell on any non-undead enemy you cast it on. So just to be a jerk, I kicked Minotaur in the groin with this.

The second partner character brings forth a minor problem. Tristam's main means of offense is through Ninja Stars, a limited resource given my self-inflicted additional rule of not opening treasure chests to replenish his supply. This meant I had a pseudo time limit on beating the Bone Dungeon - if Tristam ran out of Ninja Stars, that would be it. His offense would be crippled (attacking with his bare hands for minimal damage), and I'd have to rely on grinding B up to extreme levels to get by. That's just not practical. Yet.
That said, the limitation wasn't too terrible. With him starting off with a full stock of 99, it simply meant I couldn't grind. Unfortunately this was going to affect my performance against the boss of the dungeon...thinking about it in retrospect, I probably should've done some more grinding with Kaeli before losing her.

Becuase of my additional limitation of not even opening regular treasure chests, this was an endurance test of a dungeon. I wanted to get to Flamerus with as many of Tristam's Life charges as possible, leading to several deaths along the way. Unfortunately I just couldn't avoid using them, and so he had exactly zero left by the time I got there. Well, shit.

Partially because of this, partially because of being too stubborn to redo it, and partially because of just genuine difficulty under my circumstances, Flamerus Rex was an incredibly difficult opponent. The offense was no issue - Tristam had a healthy enough supply of Ninja Stars, and B's Bombs did acceptable damage as well. No, the problem was winning before dying. Flamerus does fairly decent damage with its attacks, and has enough HP so that Tristam would eventually run out of Life Spells if he kept using them. Furthermore, it can use Rip Earth to damage both at the same time. One of the issues of Life in battle compared to Cure is being exclusively single-target.

With all that coming together, this was actually one of the hardest fights in the challenge! Though at core, it was just down to attacking and repeating the fight until all the bounces went my way. It took several attempts, but thankfully, it did come to pass.

With that awful experience out of the way, I could move onto the next region. B was able to replenish his bombs here. While he couldn't really afford to do so just yet, with what was to come affording any refills was easy.

With the next partner character also being limited in their basic attack ammunition after a short while, I decided it would be best if I got the needed grinding out of the way right then and there. Don't want to end up in that situation again. Grinding would be a necessity for this challenge, and in that sense it's kind of the opposite of Low Level. There I had (almost) unrestricted access to anything in the game, but with minimal levels. Here I can and will grind as much as I please, to make up for the deficiency of not being able to use anything but what's mandatory.

This may have been excessive, but with Phoebe switching to a weapon that requires ammunition, I'd rather get as many levels as possible ahead of time before she has to worry about running out. The bed in Foresta is a free source of healing, the only restriction being that it naturally can't be used mid-dungeon. I would return there several times over the course of this grind in order to refresh Phoebe's healing and magic stocks.
I went up to level 15 as shown there before stopping. By the way, as a demonstration of how strong bombs are, even with all these levels, they (with 63 attack power) were still outclassing the strongest weapon B had. It won't be like this forever even for this challenge, but still, they were a weapon of choice for this challenge. I did reset and give Phoebe her proper statistics after this - I kept them on Tristam's so she'd have just a bit more attack, but for the world as a whole, her own natural water resistance in particular was more useful. Except I actually didn't do this? Did I seriously go through the whole way including Ice Golem without water resistance?!

The cave itself was mostly a non-issue. I did try to conserve Phoebe's arrows throughout, this time far more successfully due to the presence of her magic and B's increased levels. With Thunder and several charges saved up, I could easily wipe the floor with Squidite.

With the Wintry Cave completed, I had the chance to purchase Cure potions. I am allowing myself to buy consumable items, if only because going without bombs, B's primary damage source for a good chunk of the game, might push this into unreasonable territory. However, I chose to forgo this for three reasons. One, I might want said bombs instead. Two, Seeds are more beneficial in the end. And three, Cure potions are of questionable help, as mentioned restoring only a fixed quarter of the target's max HP.
There really isn't too much to say about Falls Basin. It isn't a long enough dungeon for things to really matter, and the myriad of Desert Hags and Lamias went down easily enough. Neither was the boss that big of an issue, going down to several spells and some bombs. This earlier part of the game comes before the low% restriction can really come into play. The only major difference was, as mentioned, not having the Cure spell. Which simply meant Phoebe had to do healing, as opposed to B being able to do so while she continued attacking. And when he didn't need to, he still had bombs available for use. And would get the Jumbo Bomb upgrade after the boss fight...

At the very end, Snow Crab was also a non-issue. Fire burned it down very effectively, and B could contribute just as well/keep piling the damage on while Phoebe healed due to its axe weakness.
One thing to note about Falls Basin - you can't return to it after you leave...through the north. If you leave through the south you can return, but can't advance on the map either until you exit through the north. And if you fail to pick up the Heal spell that's right there in plain sight, you can't ever get it.

The Ice Pyramid is the first really long dungeon of the game. It's where not getting those three Seeds in the ordinary chest in the Bone Dungeon came into play for the first and only time. I needed to play as conservatively as I could throughout. Some of the worst enemies because of this were these things. If an enemy in the battle was reduced to low HP - including they themselves - they would respond by casting Cure. Very obnoxious to say the least. The ideal way to deal with them was landing a paralysis via the Cat Claw, stunning them so they had no chance to cast the spell.

Though it was a struggle to get there, the result of this all was the Ice Golem being relatively easy. B tossed Jumbo Bombs as his strongest attacking option, and Phoebe attacked with Fire and healed. Didn't take much effort to win at all with B's high HP count.
Leveling and power saw me through Aquaria after a rough early game. Will the difficulty carry over to to the rest of the game, or will things still be all right? Click ahead to find out.
Next | Index