sirsystemerror | FF2 Magic-Only Challenge Part III

We can place the White Mask on a maiden's statue in Mysidia, then make a long walk to the next dungeon. Shortly into it, we get this beauty. The Black Garb has 40 defense, just under the Diamond Plate's 43. It shares a 1% magic penalty, but also has a +10 to Agility and a _zero_ evasion penalty. It even gives resistance to the Matter element. Needless to say, this is fantastic for anyone, but especially Alice - even with her ribbon, this can give her a setup that gives the desired agility and lacks any spellcasting penalty.

This is a really dull dungeon. Only exciting thing is another Aspil spell at the end, which Alice takes up. Her Intelligence is lacking, but it's more consistent than trying to use Change.

Holy 9, coming from 99 Soul...is really really strong.

One long-ass roundabout ship trip later, we finally reach the tower only to be swallowed up by a sea monster. Taunting us inside are these ElecFish, which absorb lightning. I mostly start to stick to my non-elemental spells here.

Richard the (sword-wielding) Dragoon joins us partway in this VERY short dungeon. His magic stats...suck. They suck. All I have on me is a Drain spell, which I suppose is one of the better spells to get stuck using, but still.

Guarding the way out is the Worm, also known as the Land Worm, also known as the Round Worm. 2000 HP aside, this is a complete non-threat.

Mysidia Tower!! A feature of this place is the pools of lava and frigid water on certain floors, which are much like the lava/spikes in FF1.

Before long, we bump into this fellow. His Rock special can hit back row targets for heavy damage. Marisa really feels this (you can see the damage it's done).

Against these types of enemies is where elemental weaknesses really shine. That, my friends, is just short of a one-hit kill - a bit more luck on the damage and it would've been. Fire Gigas has only 1800 HP. Who needs Toad?! Failing that, don't forget that we have a 1000+ damage attack in Holy 9.

Another Gigas is a few floors up, on an Ice-themed floor. Note that while the minibosses and treasures are ice-themed, the enemies are not. A few Fire spells does this one in.

The weakness of the Thunder Gigas is the poisonous Aero spell. Don't ask how this makes sense. Each Gigas has successively more HP that the last one, and with Aero being not trained as high, it takes a few casts to get him.

There's a couple of nice pickups in this place. There's a Flare book, which I'll be saving for later. And the Black Robe. Counterpart to the White Robe below which protects against status elements and gives +10 to Soul, this bestows protection from damaging elements and gives +10 to Intelligence.

Also, this thing guards it.

It's worth noting that if you've played the remakes, you're probably familiar with how there are two boss themes. In this version, there's only one, and it's more exclusive. Behemoth uses it, this Dragon uses it, Lamia Queen and the Gigas don't use it despite using the same boss theme as the others in the remake.

Anyway, it's an ice dragon, so fire burns it up quite good.

And then...wow, 5% drop! These are the Genji Gloves, otherwise exclusive to a well-guarded chest in the final dungeon. They have 45 defense, the highest in the game, but -47% defense and an absurd 100 magic penalty. We won't be using them for the latter aspect, needless to say.

And at the top, Ultima!! Ultima is touted as the ultimate magic of the game. However, it has a few...issues. Related to coding.

How Ultima is supposed to work: take the entire cumulative magic and weapon skills your character has, add them up, then use them to deliver heavy damage.
How Ultima actually works: nobody knows. Even that site I linked to. Some people say it does like 1 damage, some people say it does 100-200 regardless of level, that site says it does 100 at lowest level and 500 at highest.

So let's try to narrow it down, shall we? When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
- Your cumulative skill levels. I removed all of Patchy's spells, leaving only the 4 on Shield and fired off Ultima 1.
- Ultima's skill level. I pumped it up to Ultima 16, it did nothing more. I broke the game with cheats and pushed it all the way to Ultima 200+, and it did the same amount of damage (other spells did peform as expected).
- Spellcasting penalty. Doesn't seem to have any effect at all!

- Stats. Richard, with his lame 26 Soul, could sometimes do more damage than Alice, who has 99 Soul.

There's really only one thing I found to affect the variable damage, and that's enemy magic defense. These Imp enemies have a magic defense of 3x100%. Meaning they will always block three hits of magic. I couldn't get Ultima to do more than about this much damage against them even with repeated use. My theory as for the rest: the game pulls data from some changing variable to determine number of "hits".

By the way, a bonus: that blue fellow there is the DesAngel, aka Goblin Prince. It's one of the rarest enemies in the game, exclusive to just outside Kashuon and the first floor of the keep. Found these while testing Ultima's damage on those weak LegEaters (1x60% magic evasion). You'd expect such a rare encounter to be highly dangerous...but they're not. So why is it so rare...?

Stats. Alice and Marisa have maxed their magic stats. Thanks to repeated use of their non-elemental spells, they're really starting to get up there. Patchy is catching up, and will probably hit 99 in both by the end. Alice's evasion is nearly maxed out while the Main Gauche is equipped. Also good.

Note Marisa's Soul. Due to a bug with multitargetted spells, they sometimes cause the first character's Soul to increase, rather than anyone's magic defense. That's why it's as high as it is, despite Marisa never using White Magic.

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After Ultima. The lands are now being ravaged by a Cyclone. Four towns have been destroyed. The random encounters have almost changed. Some of these you never have to see yet prove interesting, like the Sand Worms and their incessent Quakes.

We have to get our Dragon from some random mirror and fly right into that bad boy.

As usual, the randoms aren't worth talking about. Alice stands in front and dodges all the physics while I chip away with magic at everything. At this point, I abandoned everything else and just started casting the nonelemental magic.

Another Dragon lies as a monster in a box. Again using elemental weaknesses, it's not much of a contest. It doesn't have nearly as cool drops as the other one, but this is a welcome semi-reusable spellcasting item.

Before facing the Emperor himself, you have to fight two sets of those Corpse enemies, which are surprisingly not undead. The Emperor himself is so lame, the boss music doesn't even play. Nay, the real nasty opponent is technically the Wood Golem. It's got 14x100% Magic Defense. Alice's Holy only did 600 to it...but Marisa's Fire 8 ignored that all and hit for 1752 damage.

Blah blah blah Dark Knight takes over and is really Hijiri, and we got an Airship.

Time to crash Paramekia Castle. There's a new flavor of Golem here, as well as those Generals. They have a 10-hit attack, which Alice is able to dodge.

This guy is actually a rare random encounter, but also serves as fixed a monster in a box. He's a bit more difficult than the standard Emperor and is actually the only undead enemy in this game not weak to fire. Non-elemental stuff gets the job done.

I get some insane drops while traversing this dungeon. First, from a Lamia Queen in a box containing a Sun Sword (the third-strongest sword), I get a second Ribbon! This will definitely come in handy. Then I get a Yoichi Bow off a General at 10% odds. The strongest bow in the game, it casts a Berserk 3 spell when used as an item. Then they drop another Sun Sword at 5%. I have no use for the latter two, sadly..

There's no boss at the end, only Byakuren Hijiri. The former Emperor comes back. In the novelization of FF2, I should mention that the Emperor sold his soul to the devil for the ability to summon legions of the damned. After dying, the devil tells him he will claim his soul, but the Emperor isn't having any of that. He proceeds to kill the devil and take over Hell. A true badass.

Hijiri is a master of weapons. Notsomuch magic, but the high Magic Power stat means Byakuren gets high MP within a few battles of grinding. I teach Flare and Ultima, because why not?

Checking up on the stats of our other members. I plan to stop using Shields on Marisa and Patchy heading into Jade, meaning they won't be as fast, but their damaging magic will be comparable to that of Alice. Really, besides the elemental stuff and Aspil, the rest of the skills weren't of much use to train up.

Alice's Evasion is essentially at its peak. The most number of hits any enemy in the game gets is 12 (really rare Iron Giants, essentially the Warmech of this game). In second place are those Generals at 10, and nothing else goes over 8. There's a few enemies that can counter it with Haste, but I can counter that with Blink. Her Holy hit _11_, since I've been using it so much.

Because of the White Robe, Patchouli actually has more Soul than Alice (94 + 10 from the robe). As with the rest of them, I've pretty much only been focusing on Holy - which has hit 10. Heal's at 5, which is good, since it can cure any permanent status but KO (which Life can).