sirsystemerror | FF4 Solo FuSoYa Part I

(art by sakizou)

FuSoYa is a 10000+ year old semisentient beard who melts into a pile of goo when defeated. He's a Lunarian who happens to be Cecil's uncle, and one of two temporary characters in this version of the game. This means he won't be getting any crazy equipment in the postgame, should I do it with him. In fact, he's the only other character besides Dark Knight Cecil who can't equip the Hero's Shield. Even Tellah can equip it, so it seems this was a conscious decision.

His unique command, Regen (also known as Spirit Wave), is arguably the second most useless ability in the original SNES version of the game - and only because there is one that is truly 100% useless. The advent of it in the series, it allows your party to gradually recover HP. Um, 10HP at a time. This is way too little to make a difference at the stage of the game he formally shows up in. The higher the Agility of FuSoYa, the less is recovered. Furthermore, in the SNES version, FuSoYa is immobilized for the duration of the command. This differs in the remakes and he becomes able to act again immediately afterwards, but it's still a command that's of little help.

The good news and FuSoYa's real hook? He knows every Black and White spell in the game. To this end, he can also use equipment for both Black and White mages.

Because of the nature of this character, I'll be uniquely breaking up this report much differently for him, rather than the usual Overworld-Underworld-Cave of Trials/Moon. Let's take a brief look at his stats. Note that these are boosted by his equipment (his magical stats being 40/40), and he has no stat gains or losses until level 70. Not bad for what he is, and especially great for now. That high level means most fighting in the early game will only be making tiny steps towards his next level, though I fought a lot anyway. FuSoYa notably happens to have the worst HP growth in the game, although ends up with more than Tellah due to his high base. This makes Apples very desirable for him to consume. His MP growth does exist, but only starts to happen later on.

Needless to say, everything early on was a total nonthreat. Everything but Mombomb died in a single spellcasting. Most randoms were dealt with via Bio. Mist Dragon to a Flare, the soldiers to a Meteor (used and activated before they even moved, and that includes the time it took to Flare Cecil!), Octomammoth to a Flare, Antlion to a Flare, the super Sahagin to several Flares and some Bios, Mombomb to two Flares, Scarmiglione the first to a Meteor, Scarmiglione the second to a Flare, both Cecils to a Flare.

One spell from FuSoYa's arsenal worth talking about is Osmose. Ordinarily relatively ineffectual and taking quite a while to cast, this is a very useful spell for him to replenish his very limited stock of MP. Of course on Ordeals it was out of the question against the legions of the damned up there, but hey! The only problem with it is that it's - like I said, relatively ineffectual. Unless you go after certain targets or happen to luck upon a miracle Lilith Rod drop, you'll only be draining 1MP at a time.

Yang went down to a bunch of Flares - MP could be replenished by hitting him with Osmose. FuSoYa got his first level-up in the Old Waterway, which, as-discussed, had no effect on any stat but HP. Baigan went down to a Meteor. Cagnazzo to a Flare. The monsters in boxes in Eblan also stood no chance, being nailed with Break.

Dark Elf's first form to a Holy. Dark Dragon to...wait, what? Apparently this thing is weak to Holy, yet it absorbs it too. So you end up with a FFL-esque situation where the enemy is weak to physical attacks of the element (such as Cecil's sword), yet resistant to magical attacks (incidentally, which you have no access to at this point). In any case, a Tornado and staff strike ended this. Also for some reason, I forgot to take a shot of Holy's damage when absorbed (it was around 1500), but did take a shot of Meteor getting absorbed.

The Puppeteers in Zot greeted me with a Rune Staff drop. Which is good, as it's the strongest physical weapon for FuSoYa and happens to come just at a time where I'll need to physically fight with him!

The Magus Sisters to a Meteor...and after them is Barbariccia. First off, I was going through this game so fast that I'd forgotten to get the Change Rod and Gaea Gear! Had to go back down the Tower of Zot to get those. Now for the spinny lady herself. Recall from my Palom solo that magical evasion is included when she goes into her spin. And recall from others that it is possible to hit her with Spider's Silk before she goes into her spin.

In other words, there's a small window at the very beginning of the fight where you can hit her with magic.

Before I did this, I went and got a Rune Armlet drop from the Puppeteers. This was difficult - they were being stubborn, giving up another Rune Staff and two Healing Staves before I got this. With this, the Change Rod, and Gaia Gear, FuSoYa achieved 48 Intellect - good for an additional multiplier. Now the only thing to do is hope the Flare devastates most of her health down. Or more specifically, reset until that happens.

After a while of trying, I end up with a good roll. That said, there's still 1317 left to clear from here. And FuSoYa was going to be missing a lot. Needed to kill everyone else too, of course.

The good news was, she was zero threat. Blink stopped the physicals, Gaia Gear stopped the petrification, and Tornado only reduces HP to critical, doing no actual damage. So it didn't matter that this was going to take a while. She was never killing FuSoYa.

With her out of the way, I could now resume my regularly scheduled curbstomping of this video game. The dolls went down to Quake. Golbez - with poison preventing paralysis - was brought down by Holy as soon as the Mist Dragon showed up and he became vulnerable.

Worth noting, most of the time at this point of the game, I was tearing through randoms with the Break spell. It's cheap at 15MP a casting, can be multi-targeted, and instantly kills when it works which is often. Also whenever a Mystery Egg showed up, that was just an invitation to Osmose whatever's inside dry.

Lugae and Barnabas, the latter dropped to a Flare. Barnabas-Z was hit with Bio twice to reduce its HP enough so its explosion would not one-shot FuSoYa. Why not just Flare it too? So FuSoYa would have 100MP left, just enough to Flare Lugaeborg twice before it can really do anything. Gotta find creative ways to save on MP, with healing items for it limited/expensive and FuSoYa having only 190.

Eblan Cave had those annoying bats, as well as an interesting staff for sale. The Power Staff has 99% accuracy. This would've been nice to have on Barbariccia!! Rune Staff's accuracy is 60%, for the record. In the Tower of Babel part 2, it was back to Breaking.

So yes, you can do this. Like I said with Palom though, this takes a Spider's Silk, Hermes Sandals, and Elixirs, so I didn't actually do this.

How about Rubicante? Who I again just got rid of everyone in the party for so there was nobody to restore to full strength. Well, his Scorch was survivable by FuSoYa, so that's all I really needed. He started off with a Blizzaga for 9999. He then alternated Curaga (to heal from Scorches) and Flare (to deal damage, due to Rubicante absorbing ice when his cloak is closed). Had to use a Dry Ether at one point due to MP running low.

At this point I was going to try to farm a Lilith Rod. This is one of those rare drops, which was made not as rare in this version of the game. It's dropped by Liliths and Lamia Queens, the latter more commonly, When used as an item, it casts Osmose at much higher effectiveness than the normal spell, not to mention instantly. So why not farm it? Because I got my enemies mixed up - Lamia Queen is postgame only, and Lamia Matriarch is what's hanging around in the lower floors of Babil part 2.

Doing a bit of a different order in the Underworld than I usually do here. All the Trap Doors were of course made to commit seppaku with Reflect. The enemies in the Sealed Cavern unfortunately had some high magic defense, necessitating the use of Tents or tactical retreats to restore MP. They were worth fighting - this is where experience really starts to become plentiful. The doors in particular were 30000EXP apiece.

And the Demon Wall in five Flares - this needed a Dry Ether to restore MP partway through, as well as an Esuna to get rid of some of the gradual petrify from its counterattacks.

On the crux of being able to properly recruit him, FuSoYa has finished all that in 5:53. Not bad for a soloist who tends to fight often. But next time, before we recruit him proper - I'll be doing the sidequests.

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