sirsystemerror | FFL2 Solo Human Part III

I finished off the mushroom's HP growth shortly into the Nasty Dungeon, with it ending with 1017 natural. This allowed me to sell off the two Body potions and free up precious inventory space.

I plucked a few things from it, in addition to that Body Potion I didn't need after all. The first of these was a Dragon Helmet, which offered up O-Para. There was the Parasuit of course. And finally, the Gungnir. It does massive damage to one group on enemies. Limited-use, but that's giving this to Robots in ordinary settings and what the unlimited-use XCalibr later on is for.

And this variant. I can get use out of it here.

Odin was a difficult fight until his underlings were down. Getting over that initial rump was very tough. The OdinCrows could be decimated with one blow, but Slepnir took two. Surviving these first few rounds took many tries especially with Odin's urge to use his own Gungnir repeatedly.

I had to use the Dragon Armor instead of the Parasuit in this fight, due to the presence of thunder-elemental attacks from Odin. I also wore the Hecate shoes due to AGL not being a factor, and to increase the potency of Cure.

Once they were down and the mushroom's HP was in the safe zone, the fight was all but won from there. Odin's Gungnirs hurt like hell as you can see, but they couldn't two-shot the mushroom, and are more than outhealed by its Cure. For the mushroom's own part, its Gungnirs were going just over 400 to Odin.

Minion was roadkill, and it certainly helped that it kept using Flame. Even if it had used Tornado, it would've been a simple affair to outheal. And I've officially completed the no MAGI sub-variant.

So these Sorcerors in the Final Dungeon presented a problem: Stone and Thunder were their two favorite attacks, but a human can't actually protect against both at once. Remember, Parasuit only gives O-Fire, O-Ice, and O-Change - a wearer is vulnerable to electricity. Dragon Armor does protect against it, but the only piece of equipment that gives O-Stone is the Arthur Armor, which can't be equpped at the same time.

I decided that the mushroom was better off with the Dragon Armor here. After all, Stone can fail to work, but Thunder being used when it's not immune to the element always dealt a ton of damage.

The mighty XCalibr was waiting in the dungeon as well. This is a fantastic weapon and is effectively a Gungnir with infinite uses. Either weapon does base damage to one enemy group equal to (STR -- 70)*15+1050. In other words, even limp-wristed characters will act as if they have 70 STR with this weapon, and ones with more than that will deal even more damage.

Speaking of which, I used this weapon and countless resets in the first floor of the Final Dungeon to get the mushroom's STR up to 72 against these DS-9 enemies. I did the same with MANA and Flare books - although robotic Ridean enemies could be dropped with Thunder Books. This grind was annoying and I probably should've done it in the opposite order because of those Sorcerors (the extra MANA would mitigate the success rate of their Stone), but I got it done in the end. Which is what counts.

Following the soft restriction I put on this challenge, I fought WarMach with XCalibr instead of Flare. This was pretty straightforward - the big thing to watch out for was NukeBomb of course. As long as I didn't get one-twoed by the attack and was careful to keep the mushroom's health high (Cure was healing over 700 at this point with the bonus from Hecate), there was nothing to it.

More interesting things I learned in this playthrough: you can still go to Bright Cave and see well with TrueEye when all your MAGI are stolen.

Apollo was easy, as was the plan. Going last every turn means lasting through this fight is 100% consistent. I snuck in a STR upgrade at the very end by using XCalibr on the turn where this happened. Another thing I learned: whoever says his MAGI is not perfect is variable, depending on whoever is alive. Same goes for the text before the battle. Both kinda weird, considering most parts of the game call a certain character in dialogue (like the fourth insulting Venus or the first's reactions to his father).

Next up was the last stat grind in the first area of the Central Shrine, taking STR and MANA to 101. Even though I only intend to really use the former, I'm boosting the latter for posterity and defensive purposes. I thought about raising AGL too, but decided there's little point at this stage of the game.

Because there are four Power potions in the game, I only needed to take STR to 89. Fighting groups of 1-2 enemy types was the way to go. XCalibr has a nice advantage when fighting Musashis - they can't counter this attack. Flare of course took care of whatever popped up when grinding MANA. It went up to 92 like it did for Toma, I retrieved the last Magic potion, and used them.

While I was in the Nasty Dungeon, I also took the time to retrieve these. Vampic might be nice against enemies I can hit with it, especially if I do take the time to grind AGL after all. Hyper of course instantly kills things.

Oddly, TianLung and Fenrir were two of the toughest bosses in the whole variant. I needed to stick with fighting a single one. I had to use Dragon Armor against TianLing becuase it could use Lightng, but did use Parasuit against Fenrir. Of course, neither protected against Tornado, which both really loved using. I even failed against single TianLung encounters multiple times due to double Tornado - can't do anything against two 600+ damage attacks in a row.

That's one disadvantage of low AGL - high could potentially react to this, although due to turn order varying greatly (see: a 41 AGL character being able to go before a 99 AGL somtimes), even this is inconsistent. They have 94 and 80 respectively, for the record. TianLung took three rounds - both have O-All, so XCalibr was doing less damage than it would normally. Fenrir took more due to its regeneration, although was oddly more cooperative in eventually allowing me to beat it. Of course if I really wanted, I could've flipped them the bird right back and Hypered them both to death.

I ran into Haniwa again down there while trying to get through the maze. I fired the Hyper Cannon and, well. Shit just got real. Unfortunately to show this off and finish in style, I would need to grind out more AGL. I'm not horribly in the hole on that unlike with the mutant and this is a very compelling reason to do so, but it doesn't seem time-efficient to do this. I don't need this to win.

Fighting Arsenal with magic was nearly identical to fighting it with Toma, so I won't show that. The only differences were not being immune to Smasher! and having 44 AGL with Parasuit on, meaning the mushroom would occasionally go first. This wasn't as disruptive in this fight, however - because Smasher! was still doing fixed physical damage, and Launch the Smasher does random damage.

Physical equipment before going in.

Strictly using physical skills...unfortunately, this jerk does have O-Change, meaning weapon damage was halved. The cannons took two shots of XCalibr and gradually repair themselves once destroyed. You attack them in order, but cannons retain their damage even if one in front of it is repaired. So the idea was to weaken them down so I could beat them 1-2-3-4. It took several turns to do this, and it was probably a better idea just to use Flare even for this phase. But it's possible, and I'm showing another way to do the fight.

It went like this: attack seven times (weakens Cannon4), heal, attack five times, stall/heal, attack three times, stall/heal, attack once, heal, attack four times, and next phase! Oddly, I found attacking eight times in a row sometimes did work, but then I'd die instantly to Smasher! the next turn.

I went in with full Giant's gear and Geta, so the Smashers were doing over 290-380 damage apiece. This could've been halved with O-Weapon, but I went with the full-on offensive option. Unfortunately for Revenge, which I'd saved up, this only inconsistently outdamaged XCalibr due to the variable damage. So I stuck with the latter, alternating using it and healing every turn.

As for the third phase, it was simply down to whether Arsenal would one-two the mushroom or not. When it didn't, the battle was won.

That's three out of four solo FFL2 challenges in the books now. If we're disregarding the impossible parts of the solo monster challenge, I'd put the solo human as easier than that one, but noticeably harder than the solo mutant. For the most part, the two challenges are identical - especially if you want to go full-magic with the human. However, not being able to attain O-All even via equipment or having any of those nifty abilities is a distinct handicap. While they can gain STR, using it at most puts them even with MANA-users. And of course mutants can gain natural DEF to become even more invincible.

The no MAGI part of the variant was interesting, and aside from the early goings where stat gains relative to damage done are difficult, really didn't have much of an effect. It also made the transition to not having any after Minion a lot less jarring. Still, their benefits really can't be underestimated, as I've shown off before.

One left, and I've saved the best for last. But there's one more thing to do here. One more thing to cover here. What if I actually had grinded up all that AGL to abuse the Seven Sword? What if I had on a Parasuit so the mushroom was rocking 116 STR and AGL? How much damage would I be able to do to Arsenal then?