FF4 Solo Palom Part I
Dec. 1st, 2014 04:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sirsystemerrorFinal Fantasy IV was a game from my childhood. After my older brother swapped it for our copy of VI/III with his friend. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks a lot. But, it may have been for the better, since I liked the game anyway. Still, I wonder how different my perception would've gone had he not done that?
Coming off FF3 and FF2 solos, I was tired of punching things. And since the first two RB solos of this game (by Sullla and Sofis respectively) were done with physical characters, let's shake things up and do a magical character. And unlike Sofis' messing with memory directly, all it takes here in the GBA version I am using is a simple change of address 02006068 to get what I want.
(art by en la festa)
Palom (on the left) is a Black Mage from Mysidia, the Yang to the Yin that is his twin sister Porom. Together, they are capable of using Twin, which casts the Pyro spell roughly 3/4 of the time and the Comet spell about 1/4 of the time, with a 1/256 chance of failing. Later on in the post-game of GBA/PSP, they may equip the Twin Stars for a chance of casting Double Meteor. Obviously, this is out for our solo challenge.
His primary skill is naturally Black Magic. It's worth noting that his twin sister and himself learn their spells at different levels than that of Rosa and Rydia. For example, the last black spell Palom learns is Flare at level 52. The last black spell Rydia learns is Meteor at level 60.
Palom also has the Bluff ability. This simply increases his Wisdom/Intellect by 16 when used. How does this play a factor? The spell multiplier is determined by Int/4 + 1. With Palom able to pump his up to 99 just with this, he can hit the maximum multiplier of 25 right from the get-go, with a bit of buffing.
Palom's stats are much as you'd expect for a magely character. Low on the physical end of things, and somewhat disappointing Agility, but high on the magical end. Among his starting equipment is an Ice Rod. Unlike the SNES version, the Blizzard spell cast by this may only be used single-target. It did on average around 30 damage to most targets. That's one disadvantage to GBA/PSP...
The good news about rod magic in this game is that it has unlimited uses. The bad news about rod magic is that, as well as being weaker, it does not benefit from the user's intelligence - instead using a fixed spell multiplier (in this case, 2). Still, it was a better alternative to physically attacking.
Let's do some image stitching here to cut back on number of images uploaded. By gaining a single level, Palom obtained the Blizzara/Ice2 spell. Whereas the first levels of spells have a spell power of 16, second level spells have a spell power of 64. Nearly four times the power!
Combined with Bluff, the Mist Dragon never stood a chance. It couldn't even do much with its physicals; they only dealt single-digit damage to even Palom.
Apparently, the General and Baron Soldiers are vulnerable to Pig. Pig is a status exclusive to this Final Fantasy, and it prevents all magic besides Pig from working. It doesn't affect physical ability. Think the opposite of Mini, which disables that, but allows full use of magic.
It's also worth noting that due to how status priorities are handled, Pig basically gives an attacker immunity to several statuses. If you can see where this is going now, you get a cookie.
Oh right, the battle...this battle works by having the General cast a "spell" to make the Baron Soldiers attack. If the soldiers are defeated, the General will cast a Retreat "spell". If the General is defeated, the soldiers attack themselves. With Pig on them, they couldn't do a thing, so they were easy to mop up after Cecil was removed from the equation.
Apparently, it's a bad idea to attack these guys with non-lethal magic? Could've been my first wipe if I wasn't careful.
Palom blasted his way through the cave by mostly leaning on his basic spells, which were more than enough at this point. Just about everything had an elemental weakness to exploit. A notable exception were the TinyMages. These little guys not only had an impressive magic defense to thwart Palom's magic, but would also respond to them with Osmose. A nice spell that's in our future, albeit one we'll be waiting until level 40 for. Short of a ridiculous drop.
If you thought Cecil and Kain had an easy time with Octomammoth, you haven't seen Palom in action. The octopus attacks at a high speed. Its speed decreases as it loses HP/tentacles, and its power increases. Palom simply Bluffed his Intellect to the maximum, and cast a Thundara. Considering the thing only has 2350HP to begin with, this was a clear-cut case of overkill.
Partway through the next dungeon, Palom reached level 19, learning Bio in the process. This spell is non-elemental, has a base power of 128 (twice as strong as -ara spells), and is cast instantly when used. Needless to say, with this, Antlion didn't stand a chance. I didn't even bother with Bluff.
This thing is a scripted encounter with an ungodly amount of HP - 45672 to be exact. Nothing Palom the destroyer can't tear through, though!! But that's stupid and requires using some Ethers, so I don't do it.
Speaking of breaking things!! MomBomb has 11000HP, but after dealing a certain amount to it, it will inflate, and after a turn, use Explode to deal damage and split into three Bombs and three GrayBombs. It never got the chance to do this, as Palom was able to blow it away with three Bluffed Bios before it could even say it was going to explode.
Nothing to note in Fabul. I gave Yang a break during the battles, just in case. All of them were over in one Bio. I was hoping he would be able to abuse Kain in the same way he abused the Sahagin, but the encounter terminated immediately after Cecil had been jumped on, followed by Palom.
And so Palom joins proper!! I actually had to reset here, because he joined with different equipment. Including, for whatever reason, a Rod instead of an Ice Rod. He was also able to upgrade to better equipment anyway.
Palom hit level 23 along the way to Mt. Ordeals, and he learned Quake. This spell targets all enemies not weak to Wind, has a base power of 200, and targets all enemies by default. This means that it does not become weaker when targetting multiple enemies.
Compare - an unbluffed Bio vs. an unbluffed Quake. Nearly ten times the damage on a set of six enemies!!
This might be a good time to talk about the damage formula for spells. First, you start with the spell's base power, which is modified based on enemy weaknesses and resistances.
- If the target is immune to the element, multiply by 0
- If the target resists the element, multiply by 1/2
- If the target is weak to the element, multiply by 2
- If the target is weak+ to the element, multiply by 4
Finally, if you are multi-targetting the spell, and it does not automatically target all enemies (such as with Quake), divide the spell power by the number of targets.
Next, the number of "hits" is calculated, based on the caster's spell modifier. First, the attacker rolls a number of times equal to their spell multiplier to see if they land a hit. If so, the defender can roll to see if they can evade. For monsters, the magic defense multiplier is always equal to 0.
The base power on each "hit" can be from 1.0-1.5 times the power, subtracted out of the target's magic defense.
If that's too complicated to wrap your head around, you can either check the Algorithms guide, or just check this out. Scarmiglione did not last against the power of Quake assault. Even without Bluff, Quake was a one hit KO on him and his Skullnants. With Bluff, I did enough damage to override his dying message, which is actually a script that triggers at low HP.
I also went without Bluff for his undead form, just because I wanted to see if I could. Bio and Fira actually did the same amount of damage, but I went with the latter, because why not? Since earth isn't actually an element in this game, he doesn't actually absorb Quake when it's used. However, he has immunity to the spell via a weakness to Wind, so it still wasn't an option for this battle.
Kain might not have been able to do this, using a solo exception to sleek on by this scripted fight, but Palom could! By Bluffing to the maximum and unleashing Quake, he could chew through Yang's HP, doing anywhere from 6000-7000 on average. It took some Ethers that were probably ill-spent, but eventually, the Monk was sunk.
The Old Waterway was actually slightly tricky for Palom. He could damage the enemies easily enough, but their damage was starting to catch up to his HP. He ran from more than a few battles when down here, preferring not to mess around too often
The body of Baigan casts Reflect on itself, in an effort to foil your mages' attempts to damage him with magic. Unfortunately for him, Quake bypasses Reflect. Whoops. Took two castings to down him, no need to mess with Bluff and risk an Entangle.
Cagnazzo is weak to Ice when he's inside his shell or not gathering water. He absorbs the element when he is gathering water, and is instead weak to electricity. Palom was easily able to handle this encounter. I didn't have him use Bluff here, except once in attempt to bypass the shell form. It didn't take, but Palom was able to outdamage its healing anyway with Blizzaras.
Palom officially leaves the party at this point, but what's that to us? This nice pickup in the Village of Mist gives a +5 to Intellect. This is about the only thing worth mentioning from getting the Airship. He could fight in Elban Castle aside from the Ogre Magi, but it wasn't worth it.
The Magnetic Cave...Palom had some problems in here. Namely, from Ogres, who hit hard even with the boastful black mage in the back row. Any back attack with them around was basically instant death. A mixture of Quake, and Bio for when it was good enough or facing the vampiress/bat groups served to get him through.
The Dark Elf at the end turned out to be an unexpectedly difficult battle, however. He actually has a fairly ridiculous Magic Defense of 254. Even with the maximum Bluff, Bio could only deal 1 damage on average. Quake wasn't much better. Palom was Level 30 at the time. I had him gain 2 more levels to pick up Blizzaga. He also had to keep the Ruby Ring on, to protect against Pig. With its power of 256. Palom was able to break through his massive defenses and move onto the second phase of the battle.
This is a good time to introduce the Boss Bit. This is a special flag set on a number of different monsters, the vast majority of which are bosses. If a monster has the Boss Bit set, any status a weapon can inflict will never be inflicted, and any spell with the bit will automatically fail - unless it is an enemy spell that inflicts a status. Spells with the Boss Bit include the vast majority of status inflicters. This is no FF5 - damage is what the game wants on almost every boss.
The one exception, however, is the Dark Dragon. It does not have the Boss Bit checked, more than likely by design due to it not being changed in remakes - however strange a choice it may be. Palom wasn't complaining in any case, as it allowed him to lock the boss down with Stop and destroy him with more Blizzaga.
The Tower of Zot had its ups and its downs. Palom could wipe the floor with the opposition with a Bio or a Quake, though they could easily defeat him - especially on a back attack. Had a few wipes here for no good reason.
The Magus Sisters are another boss who exploit Reflect. And just like before, Quake goes right through that. A couple Bluffs and a Quake saw Sandy and Mindy dying instantly, and a second one dropped Cindy. No sweat.
That brought us to Barbariccia, also known as a boss the game expects you to use a certain job for. The Dragoon Job by Kain. The bad news here was, magic evasion was included in the package of protection. To add insult to injury, Palom couldn't even get one off at the start of the fight due to what I'm presuming is a weird bug activating the magic evasion too early. So...what to do about her, who was a major roadblock for Cecil and even Kain to an extent?
Well, first!!! Something Sullla tragically overlooked when doing his Solo Cecil run was the Gaia Gear. This piece of equipment gives resistance to partial petrification, and by extension due to the game's code, instant petrification as well. This made a third of what Barbaricia had to do useless.
The only catch with this equipment is that only the mages and Cecil may equip it. Still, others have their way to go about this fight without too much pain.
His next job was to grab a Dancing Dagger - though this required a significant detour to Mist including another walk through the cave. This would be our source of damage, if magical attacks were out of the picture. As for the defensive line, he encountered these enemies, Bluffed once, and Fired every Puppet they summoned.
What for? It just so happens that every item in their drop tables is a Decoy. This useful spellcasting item lets you use Blink, which gives protection against two physical attacks.
So easy to stock up, right? Well, not exactly. Many guides tell you the drop rates on items, but what many fail to tell you is that before something can even be dropped, a check needs to be passed. There is roughly a 5/98 chance of this happening. So that Pink Tail? It doesn't have a 1/64 chance of being dropped, it has a 5/6272 chance. That's over one in 1250! Still, with the sheer number of them, Palom picked up a good dozen with no difficulty, also ascending to Level 40 in the process.
He also managed a Rune Armlet drop off a Puppeteer, giving him a bit of extra defense and magic evasion.
Long story short, this worked well. Palom was able to throw a Spider's Silk at the start, as well as Hermes Sandles for a big speed advantage. He chipped away for wildly variable damage, as low as 30 and as high as 350, but between the Gaia Gear, Decoys, and some Hi-Potions when the stock of those ran out, he was in no danger. Thanks to a bug in the game, he could stay in the back row with no harm done to his accuracy. I don't intend to abuse this for the melee characters, but why not for the ones who have trouble?
And that's the Overworld done, FF4's World 1. Next up is the Underworld section of the game.
Next | Index
Coming off FF3 and FF2 solos, I was tired of punching things. And since the first two RB solos of this game (by Sullla and Sofis respectively) were done with physical characters, let's shake things up and do a magical character. And unlike Sofis' messing with memory directly, all it takes here in the GBA version I am using is a simple change of address 02006068 to get what I want.
(art by en la festa)
Palom (on the left) is a Black Mage from Mysidia, the Yang to the Yin that is his twin sister Porom. Together, they are capable of using Twin, which casts the Pyro spell roughly 3/4 of the time and the Comet spell about 1/4 of the time, with a 1/256 chance of failing. Later on in the post-game of GBA/PSP, they may equip the Twin Stars for a chance of casting Double Meteor. Obviously, this is out for our solo challenge.
His primary skill is naturally Black Magic. It's worth noting that his twin sister and himself learn their spells at different levels than that of Rosa and Rydia. For example, the last black spell Palom learns is Flare at level 52. The last black spell Rydia learns is Meteor at level 60.
Palom also has the Bluff ability. This simply increases his Wisdom/Intellect by 16 when used. How does this play a factor? The spell multiplier is determined by Int/4 + 1. With Palom able to pump his up to 99 just with this, he can hit the maximum multiplier of 25 right from the get-go, with a bit of buffing.
Palom's stats are much as you'd expect for a magely character. Low on the physical end of things, and somewhat disappointing Agility, but high on the magical end. Among his starting equipment is an Ice Rod. Unlike the SNES version, the Blizzard spell cast by this may only be used single-target. It did on average around 30 damage to most targets. That's one disadvantage to GBA/PSP...
The good news about rod magic in this game is that it has unlimited uses. The bad news about rod magic is that, as well as being weaker, it does not benefit from the user's intelligence - instead using a fixed spell multiplier (in this case, 2). Still, it was a better alternative to physically attacking.
Let's do some image stitching here to cut back on number of images uploaded. By gaining a single level, Palom obtained the Blizzara/Ice2 spell. Whereas the first levels of spells have a spell power of 16, second level spells have a spell power of 64. Nearly four times the power!
Combined with Bluff, the Mist Dragon never stood a chance. It couldn't even do much with its physicals; they only dealt single-digit damage to even Palom.
Apparently, the General and Baron Soldiers are vulnerable to Pig. Pig is a status exclusive to this Final Fantasy, and it prevents all magic besides Pig from working. It doesn't affect physical ability. Think the opposite of Mini, which disables that, but allows full use of magic.
It's also worth noting that due to how status priorities are handled, Pig basically gives an attacker immunity to several statuses. If you can see where this is going now, you get a cookie.
Oh right, the battle...this battle works by having the General cast a "spell" to make the Baron Soldiers attack. If the soldiers are defeated, the General will cast a Retreat "spell". If the General is defeated, the soldiers attack themselves. With Pig on them, they couldn't do a thing, so they were easy to mop up after Cecil was removed from the equation.
Apparently, it's a bad idea to attack these guys with non-lethal magic? Could've been my first wipe if I wasn't careful.
Palom blasted his way through the cave by mostly leaning on his basic spells, which were more than enough at this point. Just about everything had an elemental weakness to exploit. A notable exception were the TinyMages. These little guys not only had an impressive magic defense to thwart Palom's magic, but would also respond to them with Osmose. A nice spell that's in our future, albeit one we'll be waiting until level 40 for. Short of a ridiculous drop.
If you thought Cecil and Kain had an easy time with Octomammoth, you haven't seen Palom in action. The octopus attacks at a high speed. Its speed decreases as it loses HP/tentacles, and its power increases. Palom simply Bluffed his Intellect to the maximum, and cast a Thundara. Considering the thing only has 2350HP to begin with, this was a clear-cut case of overkill.
Partway through the next dungeon, Palom reached level 19, learning Bio in the process. This spell is non-elemental, has a base power of 128 (twice as strong as -ara spells), and is cast instantly when used. Needless to say, with this, Antlion didn't stand a chance. I didn't even bother with Bluff.
This thing is a scripted encounter with an ungodly amount of HP - 45672 to be exact. Nothing Palom the destroyer can't tear through, though!! But that's stupid and requires using some Ethers, so I don't do it.
Speaking of breaking things!! MomBomb has 11000HP, but after dealing a certain amount to it, it will inflate, and after a turn, use Explode to deal damage and split into three Bombs and three GrayBombs. It never got the chance to do this, as Palom was able to blow it away with three Bluffed Bios before it could even say it was going to explode.
Nothing to note in Fabul. I gave Yang a break during the battles, just in case. All of them were over in one Bio. I was hoping he would be able to abuse Kain in the same way he abused the Sahagin, but the encounter terminated immediately after Cecil had been jumped on, followed by Palom.
And so Palom joins proper!! I actually had to reset here, because he joined with different equipment. Including, for whatever reason, a Rod instead of an Ice Rod. He was also able to upgrade to better equipment anyway.
Palom hit level 23 along the way to Mt. Ordeals, and he learned Quake. This spell targets all enemies not weak to Wind, has a base power of 200, and targets all enemies by default. This means that it does not become weaker when targetting multiple enemies.
Compare - an unbluffed Bio vs. an unbluffed Quake. Nearly ten times the damage on a set of six enemies!!
This might be a good time to talk about the damage formula for spells. First, you start with the spell's base power, which is modified based on enemy weaknesses and resistances.
- If the target is immune to the element, multiply by 0
- If the target resists the element, multiply by 1/2
- If the target is weak to the element, multiply by 2
- If the target is weak+ to the element, multiply by 4
Finally, if you are multi-targetting the spell, and it does not automatically target all enemies (such as with Quake), divide the spell power by the number of targets.
Next, the number of "hits" is calculated, based on the caster's spell modifier. First, the attacker rolls a number of times equal to their spell multiplier to see if they land a hit. If so, the defender can roll to see if they can evade. For monsters, the magic defense multiplier is always equal to 0.
The base power on each "hit" can be from 1.0-1.5 times the power, subtracted out of the target's magic defense.
If that's too complicated to wrap your head around, you can either check the Algorithms guide, or just check this out. Scarmiglione did not last against the power of Quake assault. Even without Bluff, Quake was a one hit KO on him and his Skullnants. With Bluff, I did enough damage to override his dying message, which is actually a script that triggers at low HP.
I also went without Bluff for his undead form, just because I wanted to see if I could. Bio and Fira actually did the same amount of damage, but I went with the latter, because why not? Since earth isn't actually an element in this game, he doesn't actually absorb Quake when it's used. However, he has immunity to the spell via a weakness to Wind, so it still wasn't an option for this battle.
Kain might not have been able to do this, using a solo exception to sleek on by this scripted fight, but Palom could! By Bluffing to the maximum and unleashing Quake, he could chew through Yang's HP, doing anywhere from 6000-7000 on average. It took some Ethers that were probably ill-spent, but eventually, the Monk was sunk.
The Old Waterway was actually slightly tricky for Palom. He could damage the enemies easily enough, but their damage was starting to catch up to his HP. He ran from more than a few battles when down here, preferring not to mess around too often
The body of Baigan casts Reflect on itself, in an effort to foil your mages' attempts to damage him with magic. Unfortunately for him, Quake bypasses Reflect. Whoops. Took two castings to down him, no need to mess with Bluff and risk an Entangle.
Cagnazzo is weak to Ice when he's inside his shell or not gathering water. He absorbs the element when he is gathering water, and is instead weak to electricity. Palom was easily able to handle this encounter. I didn't have him use Bluff here, except once in attempt to bypass the shell form. It didn't take, but Palom was able to outdamage its healing anyway with Blizzaras.
Palom officially leaves the party at this point, but what's that to us? This nice pickup in the Village of Mist gives a +5 to Intellect. This is about the only thing worth mentioning from getting the Airship. He could fight in Elban Castle aside from the Ogre Magi, but it wasn't worth it.
The Magnetic Cave...Palom had some problems in here. Namely, from Ogres, who hit hard even with the boastful black mage in the back row. Any back attack with them around was basically instant death. A mixture of Quake, and Bio for when it was good enough or facing the vampiress/bat groups served to get him through.
The Dark Elf at the end turned out to be an unexpectedly difficult battle, however. He actually has a fairly ridiculous Magic Defense of 254. Even with the maximum Bluff, Bio could only deal 1 damage on average. Quake wasn't much better. Palom was Level 30 at the time. I had him gain 2 more levels to pick up Blizzaga. He also had to keep the Ruby Ring on, to protect against Pig. With its power of 256. Palom was able to break through his massive defenses and move onto the second phase of the battle.
This is a good time to introduce the Boss Bit. This is a special flag set on a number of different monsters, the vast majority of which are bosses. If a monster has the Boss Bit set, any status a weapon can inflict will never be inflicted, and any spell with the bit will automatically fail - unless it is an enemy spell that inflicts a status. Spells with the Boss Bit include the vast majority of status inflicters. This is no FF5 - damage is what the game wants on almost every boss.
The one exception, however, is the Dark Dragon. It does not have the Boss Bit checked, more than likely by design due to it not being changed in remakes - however strange a choice it may be. Palom wasn't complaining in any case, as it allowed him to lock the boss down with Stop and destroy him with more Blizzaga.
The Tower of Zot had its ups and its downs. Palom could wipe the floor with the opposition with a Bio or a Quake, though they could easily defeat him - especially on a back attack. Had a few wipes here for no good reason.
The Magus Sisters are another boss who exploit Reflect. And just like before, Quake goes right through that. A couple Bluffs and a Quake saw Sandy and Mindy dying instantly, and a second one dropped Cindy. No sweat.
That brought us to Barbariccia, also known as a boss the game expects you to use a certain job for. The Dragoon Job by Kain. The bad news here was, magic evasion was included in the package of protection. To add insult to injury, Palom couldn't even get one off at the start of the fight due to what I'm presuming is a weird bug activating the magic evasion too early. So...what to do about her, who was a major roadblock for Cecil and even Kain to an extent?
Well, first!!! Something Sullla tragically overlooked when doing his Solo Cecil run was the Gaia Gear. This piece of equipment gives resistance to partial petrification, and by extension due to the game's code, instant petrification as well. This made a third of what Barbaricia had to do useless.
The only catch with this equipment is that only the mages and Cecil may equip it. Still, others have their way to go about this fight without too much pain.
His next job was to grab a Dancing Dagger - though this required a significant detour to Mist including another walk through the cave. This would be our source of damage, if magical attacks were out of the picture. As for the defensive line, he encountered these enemies, Bluffed once, and Fired every Puppet they summoned.
What for? It just so happens that every item in their drop tables is a Decoy. This useful spellcasting item lets you use Blink, which gives protection against two physical attacks.
So easy to stock up, right? Well, not exactly. Many guides tell you the drop rates on items, but what many fail to tell you is that before something can even be dropped, a check needs to be passed. There is roughly a 5/98 chance of this happening. So that Pink Tail? It doesn't have a 1/64 chance of being dropped, it has a 5/6272 chance. That's over one in 1250! Still, with the sheer number of them, Palom picked up a good dozen with no difficulty, also ascending to Level 40 in the process.
He also managed a Rune Armlet drop off a Puppeteer, giving him a bit of extra defense and magic evasion.
Long story short, this worked well. Palom was able to throw a Spider's Silk at the start, as well as Hermes Sandles for a big speed advantage. He chipped away for wildly variable damage, as low as 30 and as high as 350, but between the Gaia Gear, Decoys, and some Hi-Potions when the stock of those ran out, he was in no danger. Thanks to a bug in the game, he could stay in the back row with no harm done to his accuracy. I don't intend to abuse this for the melee characters, but why not for the ones who have trouble?
And that's the Overworld done, FF4's World 1. Next up is the Underworld section of the game.
Next | Index
