sirsystemerror | FF4 Solo Edge Part III

Into the Lunar Subterrane it is. Edge has more to gain from doing it before the Cave of Trials. The first opponent to knock off, once I was done dying to monsters in boxes I really shouldn't have opened, was the White Dragon. It guards Edge's Murasame. It notably casts Protect when used as an item, and gives +5 to Strength, Stamina, and Intelligence, though penalizes the other two stats by 5.

This was basically Barbarricia all over again. Image up, and it could never hit me regardless of how often it tried Maelstrom. It countered physicals with Slow, so in its favor, it at least remained on neutral ground in that regard after Spider's Silk...

To obtain the Masamune - which, like in FF2, casts Haste when used as an item - Ogopogo is the opponent. Beating him was just a matter of healing with Elixirs as necessary, while keeping up Image. It gives a +3 to Agility, which doesn't quite offset Murasame's penalty, but is nice anyway.

At this point, and after some more testing, I decided to leave. But not before making one last trip to get something I missed near the start. These Giant Warriors got wrecked by the Fairy Claw, and Edge claimed his ultimate armor.

Completing the Excalibur side-quest actually has a purpose for Edge. It gives him a supply of Shruiken to buy. Most of which he would not be buying at the moment, because they are insanely expensive. He actually had quite a few problems with money...I never noticed it until this playthrough, but the difficulty really spikes when you get to the Moon. Edge was having trouble with the randoms. Which meant no money.

As I told a friend of mine in midst of playing, Edge then proceeded to defang an unborn baby dragon so that he would later be able to kill a pair of long-dead skeletal dragons. But before that, it was time for the Cave of Trials.

Gigas Worm was pathetically easy. Image locked it down so that only its weak Vampire was of any significance. T-Rex was similary neutered. Master Flan continued to be an obnoxious problem.

Just know this: it took an hour of attempts to get by him. I had to go and fight an additional battle against a Golden Toad to mess with the RNG, then enter the fight. If I didn't, Edge would always die to the first Flare. With it, he would always survive the first Flare. Really messed up. The Mage Masher at least allowed him to completely tear through the master.

Once it was dead, Edge truimphantly left, came back with Yang and Cid in tow, and massacred the other two. Death Mech is a mech, so Thunder Claw allowed Edge to do over 8000 damage with every attack. Storm Dragon called for some heavy offense at the start to weaken its non-critical Tornadoes (which are based off its HP), and some healing to help with the critical Tornadoes and Maelstroms.

Before heading back to the Moon, Edge robbed one of these things of its many hammers to sell for some cash. Plague was just a matter of equipping the Full Moon (to go after its weakness to Wind) and Masamune and attacking. And also making sure I actually had strength-boosting equipment on for the attack multiplier.

And now the reason why I got all those Blue Fangs. The Lunarsaurs counter physicals by changing their AI scripts to one consisting of casting Reflect on themselves and using Bio repeatedly. This does not trigger with magic or items, so Edge was free to cover them in silk, Haste up with the Masamune, and throw out his fangs. A Red Fang I picked up from the Flan Princess room in particular did 4000+ damage to each one. The Blue Fangs did about half as much, assuming Edge was at max HP.

That just left Dark Bahamut. While it was possible to beat him, it would've meant farming Elixirs. So Edge didn't do it just yet.

And speaking of which, the five Elixirs (technically four plus a may-as-well-be-one Megalixir) Edge had on him were not enough to beat Zeromus. I even had him try throwing out Excalibur and the Holy Lance; they were not enough to push Edge through. So that meant backtracking. He entertained himself by fighting some Flan Princesses. They took ages to beat, but Edge could get the job done eventually. It ultimately made me skip searching for the Pink Tail, however.

With four more in his stocks, Edge was able to make it through. He threw four Fuma Shruikens towards the end of the battle, in attempt to push Zeromus through from his throwing out Flare to his desperation Meteors. It worked. None of the weak Meteors landed.

Incidentally, due to my streaming this runthrough (now mostly lost to the depths of time in twitch) and not wanting to mess around with the randolevels, Edge retained his position of lowest level solo to make it this far, sitting on 70. The main game is done, but the postgame is still there. How will Edge fare, I wonder...? Only one way to find out.

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