FF3 Solo Monk (NES) Part V
Dec. 1st, 2014 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sirsystemerrorSo in preparation for the final dungeon, I took Solo up to Level 68 or so by fighting outside Sylx Tower. He got 18 hits out of it, and...things took an interesting twist.
Oh.
Oh god. I got a bonus, but OH GOD. NOT GOOD.
So while grinding up or traveling, I accidentally triggered the item upgrade glitch. This happens when you have a stock on 99 of an item and get a copy of that item as a drop. It was more than likely HiPotions. This caused a number of our items to disappear from our inventory, and be replaced with...other stuff. That's of far less use. It's a really freaky glitch; the most common method is to go forward one item at a time, but others are possible - such as what happened here. It can do things like upgrade your number of items, or even change the first character's job class. It can notably be exploited to do things like get the fangs and Sylx Key early, skipping a good chunk of the game. It's very versatile, and there's not a lot of easily accessible documentation.
I didn't notice until it was too late - I already saved. Damn it, damn it, damn it. I said shit was going to get real, but wasn't expecting this. Well...okay. Only one thing to do, then. Put in some codes and get back what was taken from us. Particularly the Elixirs, which were about the only big thing that got lost, because I absolutely cannot beat the game without them. No remorse.
With that garbage out of the way, Solo is able to move onto the Sylx Tower proper, and more importantly, explore the Forbidden Land Eureka. This is an entirely optional place full of legendary weapons...and this.
The Ribbon does everything you'd expect it to do coming off FF1 and FF2, but it's guarded by a simple monster in a box that's a normal encounter later on. A few punches settles this. Unfortunately, the Ribbon doesn't protect against Toad, as a few horse enemies show me. Bleh.
The first actual boss of this gauntlet is Amon. Like his predecessor Hyne, he can change his weakness with WallChange. Unlike his predecessor, he has no real protection against physical attacks, and so dies really quickly.
Seriously game? Those 99 stocks caused this to happen. I just reload a savestate at this point - I'd started keeping some since that incident just in case - and used up a few of them to rid myself of this nonsense.
The Masamune has unfortunately been downgraded to a simple Dark Sword exclusive to the Mystic Knight class in this game, though it's the second-strongest sword after the Ragnarok. It's guarded by the Kunoichi, who tries to throw out a MindBlast each turn. Solo's new Ribbon protects him against this, so it's an easy battle.
Excalibur is protected by this guy, who simply has a physical. Solo's damage outraced his damage, though, so I didn't have to futz around with healing.
Speaking of Ragnarok, its guardian is...Guardian. It has Wall and Quake at its disposal, and sometimes heals with Cure2. Solo just ignored it and punched him to death.
But guarding an Eldest Staff and the NInja/Sage jobs...the Scylla does one thing every turn: Flare. Solo's punches hurt, but they couldn't chew through her 10000HP before she chewed through his HP. Umm...can we stop it somehow without healing?
Yup. Barrier items, which we picked up a number of in Dorga's Cave, cast Wall. This reflects a single spell - as long as it was cast from the enemy side. A few of these, and she finished her own self off.
After walking out of Eureka and back through the Ancient's Labyrinth to restock at the Invincible, this is what Solo's stats looked like.
_________________
Well...since they were there in 99, I figured I may as well use a couple of them to see if it would actually work to rebuild HP. And, it did. Don't get me wrong, the climb up was easy enough. I was just trying to play as conservatively as possible. In all honesty, it probably wasn't necessary.
Through the Sylx Tower...I didn't run into any Dragons along the way, which are this games' equivilant of a Warmech/Iron Giant. They have the bonus of being able to drop additional Elixirs or the fabled, broken Onion Equipment.
Zande is the main antagonist for most of the game, and his gimmick is that he casts Libra every odd round, and a strong spell every even round. Well, mostly strong spells. He has a set pattern in which he uses them. It wasn't too difficult, and Solo simply killed Zande before he was killed.
Battle-you-must-lose, then it's onto the Dark World. The really final dungeon of the game. There's four bosses to take down here, followed by the final boss.
Cerberus is basically Garuda 2.0 - the only attack the three-headed dog uses at 99% odds is Lightning for about 1250~. Solo drank one Elixir to get by. Note his allies were revived and healed after that fight, so now he's not dragging around minified frogs.
Echidna casts a variety of nasty spells, but a good number of them are of the instant death variety, which Solo nullifies with his Ribbon. A pair of Elixirs allowed him to put this one to rest.
Next is Ahriman, and in fact is the first appearance of them in the series. You'd expect him to deal instant death like those that follow him, but...that's not the case. Instead, he opens with Meteo. He follows up by using all sorts of high-powered magic in a specific pattern. Solo needed about 3 Elixirs here to cinch the victory.
Lastly, the Two-Headed Dragon, who is absolutely insane. A 32x99% physical coming from 255 power. Even in the back row, that hurts. And let's not talk about the front row.
_________________
Okay. So. I was expecting heavy resistance from the final boss rush. What I ended up with was three bosses that were surprisingly easy after digging into the Elixir stash, and one who's nearly impossible. Solo's attack is pretty heavily nerfed from the back...oh, that's partially because my Gods' Wines got zapped as part of the item upgrade process. If I had them, this would be easy.
So another item to hack back in. I had five of them, so that's what I gave myself. These codes really didn't contribute anything I wouldn't be able to do via stupid, tedious busywork with the upgrade glitch. So how to beat this guy. What we need is more defense. Can we get more defense?
Amazingly, yes. TurtlShell items cast Protect on your character. This dropped the dragon's attacks by a noticeable amount. But...I had only three. I could do one of two things here. First, I could farm more. They're amazingly one of the droppable items you can get as drops. The problem is, the drop rate is about 1.6%. Second, I can turn the upgrade glitch against the game to save myself time and effort.
Well, I went ahead and got a couple drops, bringing my stock to 5. But then I got impatient and upgraded glitched 5 more. Could I have gone with less? Maybe. That upgrade glitch causing me those severe problems had really riled my patience, unfortunately. It's semi-legitimate at best, but it felt good to turn it against the game.
So one trip back up the tower later, we were ready. I went straight for that dragon this time. After a couple false starts that gave me nice walks back up the tower, everything fell into place. Two wines got drank, ten shells got used. Was it overkill? Might have been, Two-Headed Dragon's damage was wildly variable. It could do as little as 29 damage in the front row, and as much as 3000~ in the back row. But Solo's offense was far more consistent. He still had to drink five Elixirs over the course of the fight, but eventually...
EAT IT.
The actual run of the ending rush wasn't much to talk about, having talked about them before. Solo...in retrospect, stupidly used a wine each on each of the final crystal bosses, leaving none left for the final boss.
The bad news is, I was clean out of potions by the end. Had to use one Elixir; even the draining stock wasn't consistent enough.
The good news is, Solo hit Level 81 on the doorstep of the final boss. This took him up to 20 hits. He was 33 HP away from the maximum, which was a little disappointing, but ultimately made no difference.
So here we are, the DarkCloud. Solo has already punched one horror looking to turn all into the void to death. Can he punch out another? Note that without having beaten the four dark crystal bosses, this simply plays out as a repeat of the first, unwinnable encounter. With it, she (at least, from the anatomy and Dissidia I would presume this is a female entity) becomes vulnerable.
For the offense we're up against, DarkCloud simply does one attack. Ever. At 100% odds, she uses FlareWave every turn. This does around 2000 damage every time.
For the offense she's up against, Solo punched and punched away. If he did have an extra wine, or didn't needlessly use them on the dark crystal bosses, his damage output would be just under double this. Since he did not, all he could do was punch away. A pure damage and healing race. 45000HP vs. 11 Elixirs. 2000~ damage a turn vs. 2500~ damage a turn.
As it turns out, I was horribly stingy with Elixirs throughout the game. Solo had 6 remaining in his stocks when he won the battle.
And so guided by one of his fans, who again is arguably committing a kind of copyright infringement, Solo claims victory over another Final Fantasy game. The game itself conspired against him towards the end there, which was frustrating. But he got through to the end. I hope I have served him well
It's worth noting that after completing this, I found a guide on GameFAQs that details exactly this kind of challenge. The writer advised going to level 99 for Sylx and the Dark World - at least for a Monk. It also detailed the White Mage and Black Mage versions of the quest; the former was actually the easier one, which doesn't really surprise me thanks to it actually having offensive magic, the buffing magic Haste, and healing.
He also does silly arbitrary things like demand you exploit the upgrade glitch to minify your characters, but NOWHERE ELSE. He also forbids the Onion Equipment even if it's dropped, to the point of asking you reload a savestate if one of them drops a piece in Sylx Tower and try to get it to drop an Elixir instead...in a Black Mage game. It did detail a way to get Toaded without having to make an exception...but says it's okay to make a temporary switch cast the spell on your own party members but not for your soloist, but highly recommends it for personal pride. Um, yeah.
Well, it's a Monk game, so his strategies more or less matched mine. Except for maxing level, and the fact that he not once considered the back row as a strategic advantage. I was surprised at that. There's a damage formula guide worth checking there too, and according to it, attacking from or to a back row carries a penalty of Hit% = (Hit%/2). This is a non-trivial advantage when you consider most enemies don't have perfect accuracy or a high number of hits. I really was on the right track with that.
Thanks for reading. More FF3 in the future? Probably, if I can handle it. And considering some of the things I went through before and after, I should be fine on that front.
Index
Oh.
Oh god. I got a bonus, but OH GOD. NOT GOOD.
So while grinding up or traveling, I accidentally triggered the item upgrade glitch. This happens when you have a stock on 99 of an item and get a copy of that item as a drop. It was more than likely HiPotions. This caused a number of our items to disappear from our inventory, and be replaced with...other stuff. That's of far less use. It's a really freaky glitch; the most common method is to go forward one item at a time, but others are possible - such as what happened here. It can do things like upgrade your number of items, or even change the first character's job class. It can notably be exploited to do things like get the fangs and Sylx Key early, skipping a good chunk of the game. It's very versatile, and there's not a lot of easily accessible documentation.
I didn't notice until it was too late - I already saved. Damn it, damn it, damn it. I said shit was going to get real, but wasn't expecting this. Well...okay. Only one thing to do, then. Put in some codes and get back what was taken from us. Particularly the Elixirs, which were about the only big thing that got lost, because I absolutely cannot beat the game without them. No remorse.
With that garbage out of the way, Solo is able to move onto the Sylx Tower proper, and more importantly, explore the Forbidden Land Eureka. This is an entirely optional place full of legendary weapons...and this.
The Ribbon does everything you'd expect it to do coming off FF1 and FF2, but it's guarded by a simple monster in a box that's a normal encounter later on. A few punches settles this. Unfortunately, the Ribbon doesn't protect against Toad, as a few horse enemies show me. Bleh.
The first actual boss of this gauntlet is Amon. Like his predecessor Hyne, he can change his weakness with WallChange. Unlike his predecessor, he has no real protection against physical attacks, and so dies really quickly.
Seriously game? Those 99 stocks caused this to happen. I just reload a savestate at this point - I'd started keeping some since that incident just in case - and used up a few of them to rid myself of this nonsense.
The Masamune has unfortunately been downgraded to a simple Dark Sword exclusive to the Mystic Knight class in this game, though it's the second-strongest sword after the Ragnarok. It's guarded by the Kunoichi, who tries to throw out a MindBlast each turn. Solo's new Ribbon protects him against this, so it's an easy battle.
Excalibur is protected by this guy, who simply has a physical. Solo's damage outraced his damage, though, so I didn't have to futz around with healing.
Speaking of Ragnarok, its guardian is...Guardian. It has Wall and Quake at its disposal, and sometimes heals with Cure2. Solo just ignored it and punched him to death.
But guarding an Eldest Staff and the NInja/Sage jobs...the Scylla does one thing every turn: Flare. Solo's punches hurt, but they couldn't chew through her 10000HP before she chewed through his HP. Umm...can we stop it somehow without healing?
Yup. Barrier items, which we picked up a number of in Dorga's Cave, cast Wall. This reflects a single spell - as long as it was cast from the enemy side. A few of these, and she finished her own self off.
After walking out of Eureka and back through the Ancient's Labyrinth to restock at the Invincible, this is what Solo's stats looked like.
_________________
Well...since they were there in 99, I figured I may as well use a couple of them to see if it would actually work to rebuild HP. And, it did. Don't get me wrong, the climb up was easy enough. I was just trying to play as conservatively as possible. In all honesty, it probably wasn't necessary.
Through the Sylx Tower...I didn't run into any Dragons along the way, which are this games' equivilant of a Warmech/Iron Giant. They have the bonus of being able to drop additional Elixirs or the fabled, broken Onion Equipment.
Zande is the main antagonist for most of the game, and his gimmick is that he casts Libra every odd round, and a strong spell every even round. Well, mostly strong spells. He has a set pattern in which he uses them. It wasn't too difficult, and Solo simply killed Zande before he was killed.
Battle-you-must-lose, then it's onto the Dark World. The really final dungeon of the game. There's four bosses to take down here, followed by the final boss.
Cerberus is basically Garuda 2.0 - the only attack the three-headed dog uses at 99% odds is Lightning for about 1250~. Solo drank one Elixir to get by. Note his allies were revived and healed after that fight, so now he's not dragging around minified frogs.
Echidna casts a variety of nasty spells, but a good number of them are of the instant death variety, which Solo nullifies with his Ribbon. A pair of Elixirs allowed him to put this one to rest.
Next is Ahriman, and in fact is the first appearance of them in the series. You'd expect him to deal instant death like those that follow him, but...that's not the case. Instead, he opens with Meteo. He follows up by using all sorts of high-powered magic in a specific pattern. Solo needed about 3 Elixirs here to cinch the victory.
Lastly, the Two-Headed Dragon, who is absolutely insane. A 32x99% physical coming from 255 power. Even in the back row, that hurts. And let's not talk about the front row.
_________________
Okay. So. I was expecting heavy resistance from the final boss rush. What I ended up with was three bosses that were surprisingly easy after digging into the Elixir stash, and one who's nearly impossible. Solo's attack is pretty heavily nerfed from the back...oh, that's partially because my Gods' Wines got zapped as part of the item upgrade process. If I had them, this would be easy.
So another item to hack back in. I had five of them, so that's what I gave myself. These codes really didn't contribute anything I wouldn't be able to do via stupid, tedious busywork with the upgrade glitch. So how to beat this guy. What we need is more defense. Can we get more defense?
Amazingly, yes. TurtlShell items cast Protect on your character. This dropped the dragon's attacks by a noticeable amount. But...I had only three. I could do one of two things here. First, I could farm more. They're amazingly one of the droppable items you can get as drops. The problem is, the drop rate is about 1.6%. Second, I can turn the upgrade glitch against the game to save myself time and effort.
Well, I went ahead and got a couple drops, bringing my stock to 5. But then I got impatient and upgraded glitched 5 more. Could I have gone with less? Maybe. That upgrade glitch causing me those severe problems had really riled my patience, unfortunately. It's semi-legitimate at best, but it felt good to turn it against the game.
So one trip back up the tower later, we were ready. I went straight for that dragon this time. After a couple false starts that gave me nice walks back up the tower, everything fell into place. Two wines got drank, ten shells got used. Was it overkill? Might have been, Two-Headed Dragon's damage was wildly variable. It could do as little as 29 damage in the front row, and as much as 3000~ in the back row. But Solo's offense was far more consistent. He still had to drink five Elixirs over the course of the fight, but eventually...
EAT IT.
The actual run of the ending rush wasn't much to talk about, having talked about them before. Solo...in retrospect, stupidly used a wine each on each of the final crystal bosses, leaving none left for the final boss.
The bad news is, I was clean out of potions by the end. Had to use one Elixir; even the draining stock wasn't consistent enough.
The good news is, Solo hit Level 81 on the doorstep of the final boss. This took him up to 20 hits. He was 33 HP away from the maximum, which was a little disappointing, but ultimately made no difference.
So here we are, the DarkCloud. Solo has already punched one horror looking to turn all into the void to death. Can he punch out another? Note that without having beaten the four dark crystal bosses, this simply plays out as a repeat of the first, unwinnable encounter. With it, she (at least, from the anatomy and Dissidia I would presume this is a female entity) becomes vulnerable.
For the offense we're up against, DarkCloud simply does one attack. Ever. At 100% odds, she uses FlareWave every turn. This does around 2000 damage every time.
For the offense she's up against, Solo punched and punched away. If he did have an extra wine, or didn't needlessly use them on the dark crystal bosses, his damage output would be just under double this. Since he did not, all he could do was punch away. A pure damage and healing race. 45000HP vs. 11 Elixirs. 2000~ damage a turn vs. 2500~ damage a turn.
As it turns out, I was horribly stingy with Elixirs throughout the game. Solo had 6 remaining in his stocks when he won the battle.
And so guided by one of his fans, who again is arguably committing a kind of copyright infringement, Solo claims victory over another Final Fantasy game. The game itself conspired against him towards the end there, which was frustrating. But he got through to the end. I hope I have served him well
It's worth noting that after completing this, I found a guide on GameFAQs that details exactly this kind of challenge. The writer advised going to level 99 for Sylx and the Dark World - at least for a Monk. It also detailed the White Mage and Black Mage versions of the quest; the former was actually the easier one, which doesn't really surprise me thanks to it actually having offensive magic, the buffing magic Haste, and healing.
He also does silly arbitrary things like demand you exploit the upgrade glitch to minify your characters, but NOWHERE ELSE. He also forbids the Onion Equipment even if it's dropped, to the point of asking you reload a savestate if one of them drops a piece in Sylx Tower and try to get it to drop an Elixir instead...in a Black Mage game. It did detail a way to get Toaded without having to make an exception...but says it's okay to make a temporary switch cast the spell on your own party members but not for your soloist, but highly recommends it for personal pride. Um, yeah.
Well, it's a Monk game, so his strategies more or less matched mine. Except for maxing level, and the fact that he not once considered the back row as a strategic advantage. I was surprised at that. There's a damage formula guide worth checking there too, and according to it, attacking from or to a back row carries a penalty of Hit% = (Hit%/2). This is a non-trivial advantage when you consider most enemies don't have perfect accuracy or a high number of hits. I really was on the right track with that.
Thanks for reading. More FF3 in the future? Probably, if I can handle it. And considering some of the things I went through before and after, I should be fine on that front.
Index
