FFR: Solo Geomancer Part II
Nov. 12th, 2024 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sirsystemerrorMy past three FFR solos didn't promote to complete the game. In the case of Evoker, not much of consequence was added. Green Mage would've gotten a once per floor save point, which is pretty nuts even if you can only use TENTs at them. In the case of Lancer, it was more equipment and a broken ability that invalidates randoms. Those two would've snapped the game apart had I taken full advantage of them. But this time, I was considering it. Elementalist has a small yet big change from Geomancer that really helps the class. But Geomancer without promotion would also be more of a 'challenge' run.
The answer I arrived at was to do both if there was merit, and report both! And there certainly was merit here.
Because after promotion, what are now Elementalists gain a good ability that fixes the problems with geomancy: SAMPLE. No longer are you bound by the set of the dungeon you're in. Instead, you can use the world ability to get a second set of spells! They have their own spell slots (copied from your current max), cannot be refreshed (not even at an inn) without resampling, and cannot be used in the same terrain they're from, for no reason other than sensible balance.
I figured promotion would be the more interesting run to go through as the "prime" run just because of this one ability. The run was otherwise going to be reduced to the usual spellcasting items spam. But to up the stakes? I'm banning them moving forward for Elementalist. Zeus is fine on runs like this for the Ice Cave, but after that? Yeah. Let's go.
So what can SAMPLE do? Take the Waterfall, for example. Actually, in earlier versions of this, it featured the river terrain. This is even worse than artificial if you can believe that: a single target Water-elemental attack, another single target Water-elemental attack, a single target Water and Death elemental KO move in the vein of XXXX, SNARE, etc, and a multi target status heal. With two more Water-elemental attacks in AoE flavor if you get lucky. As you might expect, every single enemy on rivers resist Water, so it is completely useless on them.
It could play havoc here against MudGOLs which are weak to the element, but it was technically a bug (it had no terrain formally set so just carried over the river terrain) and Ozmo put artificial here instead. Why artificial in a damn cave behind a waterfall? Some sort of kink, maybe?
Actually ironically artificial was better to have here just because it gave an AoE for the spike. I failed my first run in because I got a bit too eager with fighting and gained a level. Eesh, thought I had plenty of wiggle room to get in and out and be ready to level after. Made sure that didn't happen the second time.
That said, the Sea Shrine was going to be tougher with my restrictions than it would be for the unpromoted class which I would allow to spam the usual Zeus. Nothing's really amazing to take into here: only the Ocean and Floating Castle terrains have a lit attack, and both are single target. Aquatic enemies resist earth and fire as well as their own element.
So I decided I would take grass terrain inside as I cleared the upper half. This would give me an edge up on GHOSTs, give a non-elemental AoE, and not a lot in the shrine resisted wind so that gave me another attack besides a melee one. It wasn't too much trouble, and I got to the SLAB, Opal Bracelet, etc. and back on the first try.
Guo Pu took the Sea Shrine's own terrain with him into Gurgu Volcano to take on KARY. She was not only weak to the water element, but there was a second spell in it that was helpful: PRESSURE. This reduces the target's attack value by 20%. No save, no roll, it just works. This meant that she went from a base of 40 to 32 and then 25.
Suddenly, her individual hits usually did 1 damage to Guo Pu; I'm pretty sure it's actually stronger than shown because she should have been able to hit for as much as 50 damage on any of her six attacks. Which was still just 13 against Guo Pu's absorb. Maybe she just got unlucky and rolled on the lower end each time.
With this in play and his own offensive spells doing heavy damage, this one became a formality.
I also had business back in the Ice Cave, where I no longer feared to tread thanks to having a Ribbon. What a big difference immunity to status and death elements did, huh? Another elemental bell was here ready to be claimed, that I really didn't care to dawdle around to grab the first time. These all had a specific use later.
I took the Ice Cave's terrain down into the Sea Shrine's depths. The underwater terrain's native PRESSURE would help for GHOSTs and KRAKEN, and the former weren't resistant to water. The ice element meanwhile, would help deal with WATERs. It shouldn't be a surprise that a Water Bell was down here to grab too. PRESSURE was useful in general actually. It definitely reduces attack more than by 20%. I usually threw it up and used TERRAIN to refresh before running from encounters. Against those I couldn't, two shots of water AoE was still enough for R.SAHAGs. There was also this hidden move. It's supposedly poison-elemental, not death-elemental like I thought it would be. Also used by the rare new HADES encounter down here.
I actually died once to WATERs when they did too much damage before I could do anything. I used the Ice Bell instead of the Water Bell to prevent that on the next go.
To further show how great PRESSURE is, this is how much KRAKEN did on the first swing. Ouch.
And this is what he was reduced to after just one. The reason why I say it has to be more than 20% is that he has an attack value of 50. 20% of that is 40, which should be statistically impossible to hit for 1 against Guo Pu's 37 absorb and very unlikely to hit that low on all hits (the range is anywhere from one to two times). But it was. After crippling him further, I healed up with ICEWALL, used FORGED IN ICE several times, and began smacking him.
It still only did like double digit damage, so I tried geomancy instead. Yeah, that did it. And that's without a weakness too, just an elemental boost from a bell. Geomancers can do some scary damage even without getting into the broken nonsense that is their LIMIT.
I gained some levels going up and down the Mirage Tower for two reasons. One was that I was fetching the last two remaining bells. The Wind Bell is on the north side of Mirage's F2 treasure room, and the Thunder Bell was in the upper right of Floating Castle F2. The other was that I was testing a bug: each terrain is supposed to have its own separate spell slots, but in this version, any charges you used in artificial were used in celestial. It didn't happen the other way around. Even Ozmo wasn't sure how that happened.
The Blessed Bell combines the effects of all the other bells into one omni*-elemental boosting package, and also has 20/20/1 offenses. Non-elemental, poison, and time (only seen in Astral terrain accessible with an Evoker) are unaffected, however. It also has a very special secondary effect I may or may not show off. Depends.
Floating Castle had a new terrain, and it was not wind based as you might expect. Instead, it had PLASMA, a single target lit elemental attack. There was also METEOR SHOWER, a multi-target attack. Since it was non-elemental, that meant it couldn't benefit from the Blessed Bell's bonuses and did sad damage. Then there was STARDUST, which inflicted random statuses on all enemies. But the big one was COSMIC RAYS. This was a 30% boost to ally magic damage! After a couple of these, PLASMA was approaching like 2000 damage on the hapless randoms.
If you're curious, the Astral plane has a ST and AoE Time-elemental spell, and clones of STARDUST/COSMIC RAYS as the other two. The two classes have nice synergy in how you can benefit from them sooner, and it just so happens there's a relatively useless summon you can keep around to keep sampling Astral terrain. Wouldn't be seen in a solo, of course.
I grabbed the ProCape and--
--got killed by WarMECH. You must really have a deathwish, robot.
I hard reset and went back up, aiming for encounter 20 to challenge it. Now, every promoted class in the game has a LIMIT skill, a one-time ability. You either need to use an Inn (not a HOUSE) or the Red Wizard's LIMIT to recharge. Not all are created equal. For example, Dragoon's executes an immediate SUPER JUMP and removes tiredness on JUMPs, but it only lasts for three rounds and it still counts air time. It's mediocre. Summoner instantly resummons the last summon. This can be great. Green Wizard gives status immunity. Questionable outside of one superboss you can fight with a Rune Fencer.
This is Elementalist's: GEOSTORM. It's an AoE elemental nuke normally, fairly modest. But with the Blessed Bell? This happens. Not something I intended to use, but if anything deserves it, it's this thing. And that was on the lower end of rolls. I hit him for over 10000 damage once. I don't know if that was a nerf or what. Still, that was--
--yeah, yeah. Knew I was about to screw myself here. I missed the VIT roll on this level, so I couldn't save this attempt. Although if I gain a level, level 40 has a guaranteed STR and VIT gain. So if I do that, then I can murder this thing and get away with it. So I went ahead and did that, returned, hard reset, and went back up ready for murder.
What, you think I need that cheap parlor trick to win? Hah!
Crushed under enough PRESSURE, even WarMECH's physicals were reduced to nothing. Even his NUCLEAR was neutered thanks to BUBBLE CURTAIN, which causes enemy magic/skills to deal half damage. It's identical to Green Wizard's SHELL2.
He used it all of once for a mere 50 damage. With that in place and some buffing with COSMIC RAYS, it was just a matter of using WATERSPOUT until the robot blew up.
Blam. No spellcasting items, no GEOSTORM cheese, just pure geomancy against the big bad robot to achieve victory. I actually had to go back and fetch the ProCape due to where I was on the encounter table. Then I had to stall the encounter table so I didn't get a second one on the way back. Yeah, could've nuked that one with GEOSTORM, but again, level ups.
Against TIAMAT, I tried rolling with STARDUST, and cracked up laughing when this was the result. It's non-elemental, so anything is fair game against this as long as it gets through magic defense. FFR does give certain monsters outright immunities to certain status, but this is limited to CHAOS and original enemies. With her good and confused, I had Guo Pu start stacking COSMIC RAYS. I wanted to see just how high damage his could get. He used all five charges by the time TIAMAT recovered, and unleashed hell.
Or so I thought. That was underwhelming. I took underwater terrain partly because water is specifically one of the elements she does not resist. Maybe it doesn't stack, or she's resistant to water even if the in-game bestiary doesn't say so. Still got her in two casts, but ugh.
Almost there for this. The last part and the unpromoted run are left.
Next | Index
The answer I arrived at was to do both if there was merit, and report both! And there certainly was merit here.
Because after promotion, what are now Elementalists gain a good ability that fixes the problems with geomancy: SAMPLE. No longer are you bound by the set of the dungeon you're in. Instead, you can use the world ability to get a second set of spells! They have their own spell slots (copied from your current max), cannot be refreshed (not even at an inn) without resampling, and cannot be used in the same terrain they're from, for no reason other than sensible balance.
I figured promotion would be the more interesting run to go through as the "prime" run just because of this one ability. The run was otherwise going to be reduced to the usual spellcasting items spam. But to up the stakes? I'm banning them moving forward for Elementalist. Zeus is fine on runs like this for the Ice Cave, but after that? Yeah. Let's go.
So what can SAMPLE do? Take the Waterfall, for example. Actually, in earlier versions of this, it featured the river terrain. This is even worse than artificial if you can believe that: a single target Water-elemental attack, another single target Water-elemental attack, a single target Water and Death elemental KO move in the vein of XXXX, SNARE, etc, and a multi target status heal. With two more Water-elemental attacks in AoE flavor if you get lucky. As you might expect, every single enemy on rivers resist Water, so it is completely useless on them.
It could play havoc here against MudGOLs which are weak to the element, but it was technically a bug (it had no terrain formally set so just carried over the river terrain) and Ozmo put artificial here instead. Why artificial in a damn cave behind a waterfall? Some sort of kink, maybe?
Actually ironically artificial was better to have here just because it gave an AoE for the spike. I failed my first run in because I got a bit too eager with fighting and gained a level. Eesh, thought I had plenty of wiggle room to get in and out and be ready to level after. Made sure that didn't happen the second time.
That said, the Sea Shrine was going to be tougher with my restrictions than it would be for the unpromoted class which I would allow to spam the usual Zeus. Nothing's really amazing to take into here: only the Ocean and Floating Castle terrains have a lit attack, and both are single target. Aquatic enemies resist earth and fire as well as their own element.
So I decided I would take grass terrain inside as I cleared the upper half. This would give me an edge up on GHOSTs, give a non-elemental AoE, and not a lot in the shrine resisted wind so that gave me another attack besides a melee one. It wasn't too much trouble, and I got to the SLAB, Opal Bracelet, etc. and back on the first try.
Guo Pu took the Sea Shrine's own terrain with him into Gurgu Volcano to take on KARY. She was not only weak to the water element, but there was a second spell in it that was helpful: PRESSURE. This reduces the target's attack value by 20%. No save, no roll, it just works. This meant that she went from a base of 40 to 32 and then 25.
Suddenly, her individual hits usually did 1 damage to Guo Pu; I'm pretty sure it's actually stronger than shown because she should have been able to hit for as much as 50 damage on any of her six attacks. Which was still just 13 against Guo Pu's absorb. Maybe she just got unlucky and rolled on the lower end each time.
With this in play and his own offensive spells doing heavy damage, this one became a formality.
I also had business back in the Ice Cave, where I no longer feared to tread thanks to having a Ribbon. What a big difference immunity to status and death elements did, huh? Another elemental bell was here ready to be claimed, that I really didn't care to dawdle around to grab the first time. These all had a specific use later.
I took the Ice Cave's terrain down into the Sea Shrine's depths. The underwater terrain's native PRESSURE would help for GHOSTs and KRAKEN, and the former weren't resistant to water. The ice element meanwhile, would help deal with WATERs. It shouldn't be a surprise that a Water Bell was down here to grab too. PRESSURE was useful in general actually. It definitely reduces attack more than by 20%. I usually threw it up and used TERRAIN to refresh before running from encounters. Against those I couldn't, two shots of water AoE was still enough for R.SAHAGs. There was also this hidden move. It's supposedly poison-elemental, not death-elemental like I thought it would be. Also used by the rare new HADES encounter down here.
I actually died once to WATERs when they did too much damage before I could do anything. I used the Ice Bell instead of the Water Bell to prevent that on the next go.
To further show how great PRESSURE is, this is how much KRAKEN did on the first swing. Ouch.
And this is what he was reduced to after just one. The reason why I say it has to be more than 20% is that he has an attack value of 50. 20% of that is 40, which should be statistically impossible to hit for 1 against Guo Pu's 37 absorb and very unlikely to hit that low on all hits (the range is anywhere from one to two times). But it was. After crippling him further, I healed up with ICEWALL, used FORGED IN ICE several times, and began smacking him.
It still only did like double digit damage, so I tried geomancy instead. Yeah, that did it. And that's without a weakness too, just an elemental boost from a bell. Geomancers can do some scary damage even without getting into the broken nonsense that is their LIMIT.
I gained some levels going up and down the Mirage Tower for two reasons. One was that I was fetching the last two remaining bells. The Wind Bell is on the north side of Mirage's F2 treasure room, and the Thunder Bell was in the upper right of Floating Castle F2. The other was that I was testing a bug: each terrain is supposed to have its own separate spell slots, but in this version, any charges you used in artificial were used in celestial. It didn't happen the other way around. Even Ozmo wasn't sure how that happened.
The Blessed Bell combines the effects of all the other bells into one omni*-elemental boosting package, and also has 20/20/1 offenses. Non-elemental, poison, and time (only seen in Astral terrain accessible with an Evoker) are unaffected, however. It also has a very special secondary effect I may or may not show off. Depends.
Floating Castle had a new terrain, and it was not wind based as you might expect. Instead, it had PLASMA, a single target lit elemental attack. There was also METEOR SHOWER, a multi-target attack. Since it was non-elemental, that meant it couldn't benefit from the Blessed Bell's bonuses and did sad damage. Then there was STARDUST, which inflicted random statuses on all enemies. But the big one was COSMIC RAYS. This was a 30% boost to ally magic damage! After a couple of these, PLASMA was approaching like 2000 damage on the hapless randoms.
If you're curious, the Astral plane has a ST and AoE Time-elemental spell, and clones of STARDUST/COSMIC RAYS as the other two. The two classes have nice synergy in how you can benefit from them sooner, and it just so happens there's a relatively useless summon you can keep around to keep sampling Astral terrain. Wouldn't be seen in a solo, of course.
I grabbed the ProCape and--
--got killed by WarMECH. You must really have a deathwish, robot.
I hard reset and went back up, aiming for encounter 20 to challenge it. Now, every promoted class in the game has a LIMIT skill, a one-time ability. You either need to use an Inn (not a HOUSE) or the Red Wizard's LIMIT to recharge. Not all are created equal. For example, Dragoon's executes an immediate SUPER JUMP and removes tiredness on JUMPs, but it only lasts for three rounds and it still counts air time. It's mediocre. Summoner instantly resummons the last summon. This can be great. Green Wizard gives status immunity. Questionable outside of one superboss you can fight with a Rune Fencer.
This is Elementalist's: GEOSTORM. It's an AoE elemental nuke normally, fairly modest. But with the Blessed Bell? This happens. Not something I intended to use, but if anything deserves it, it's this thing. And that was on the lower end of rolls. I hit him for over 10000 damage once. I don't know if that was a nerf or what. Still, that was--
--yeah, yeah. Knew I was about to screw myself here. I missed the VIT roll on this level, so I couldn't save this attempt. Although if I gain a level, level 40 has a guaranteed STR and VIT gain. So if I do that, then I can murder this thing and get away with it. So I went ahead and did that, returned, hard reset, and went back up ready for murder.
What, you think I need that cheap parlor trick to win? Hah!
Crushed under enough PRESSURE, even WarMECH's physicals were reduced to nothing. Even his NUCLEAR was neutered thanks to BUBBLE CURTAIN, which causes enemy magic/skills to deal half damage. It's identical to Green Wizard's SHELL2.
He used it all of once for a mere 50 damage. With that in place and some buffing with COSMIC RAYS, it was just a matter of using WATERSPOUT until the robot blew up.
Blam. No spellcasting items, no GEOSTORM cheese, just pure geomancy against the big bad robot to achieve victory. I actually had to go back and fetch the ProCape due to where I was on the encounter table. Then I had to stall the encounter table so I didn't get a second one on the way back. Yeah, could've nuked that one with GEOSTORM, but again, level ups.
Against TIAMAT, I tried rolling with STARDUST, and cracked up laughing when this was the result. It's non-elemental, so anything is fair game against this as long as it gets through magic defense. FFR does give certain monsters outright immunities to certain status, but this is limited to CHAOS and original enemies. With her good and confused, I had Guo Pu start stacking COSMIC RAYS. I wanted to see just how high damage his could get. He used all five charges by the time TIAMAT recovered, and unleashed hell.
Or so I thought. That was underwhelming. I took underwater terrain partly because water is specifically one of the elements she does not resist. Maybe it doesn't stack, or she's resistant to water even if the in-game bestiary doesn't say so. Still got her in two casts, but ugh.
Almost there for this. The last part and the unpromoted run are left.
Next | Index
