Gotcha Powers!, FFV Advance Blue Mage solo progress

So, decided to start with the Blue Mage for this. Given his skillset, the only name that seemed proper was obviously Megaman(Megamn due to letter limit). Not taking screencaps for this one because I'm lazy. Use the power of IMAGINAAATION.

Up to the Torna Canal at the moment. Keeping myself at level 5 for the time being.

Before heading in, I managed to grab Vampire, Goblin Punch, and Aero.

Lots of enemies here consisting of sea life and octopi. Apparently they only target the female members of your party. Nice job FF.

Suddenly, WHIRLPOOL. WE'RE GOIN DOWN.

Karlabos-1 reset
Karlabos is level 5. I'm level 5. Goblin Punch does 8x damage if youy and the enemy are the same level. This fight was over quick. Died when he paralyzed me, used a move to knock my to single digit HP, then hit me with an attack before I could react.

Next...powerleveling in the Ship Graveyard.

level 12 seems good.

Siren
Pretty meh fight. Vampire is crazy handy here against her living phase, taking me to full health from whatever damage her undead phase does. Goblin Punched her when I didn't need healing(Aero does 6 damage against her living phase, so it's useless). I think she tried to silence me a couple times, but it never took. She used Haste and Protect a lot, but they wore off whenever she swapped phases, so heh. The only time I almost died was when she Slowed me and piled the damage on, but Vampire would take me right back to full health.

TO North Mountain, after stocking up on stuff.

The mountain itself had little to offer. Picked up Flash from the Headstones in the area. This would be useful.

Magissa(+Forza)
Same old at first. Used Goblin Punch, Vampire when I get too low, yadda yadda.

Then comes Forza. Hits hard, not helpful.....Flash handily neuters him. Magissa goes down pretty quickly, any hits they do make just boost Vampire's power(fun note, Vampire's damage is calculated as [(Max HP-Current HP)/2=Damage], but whether it's a bug or not, the (/2) bit doesn't get counted, so Vampire will always do however much damage you've taken. Essentially ???? with a Drain effect.). They die pretty quickly.

Grabbed Pond's Chorus from Walse Castle(Frog enemies behind the waterfall use it). WOuld egt the treasures in the basement, but fucking Jackanapes. Always ambush you and hit me for over 400 damage a shot.

Garula
lol, he's vulnerable to Toad. Though it's a bit moot when he immediately Toads himself to get rid of it, but still. A quick Flash to lower his hit chance followed by Aero spam, with a Vampire when I need to heal. After he hits a certain HP amount, eh starts countering, which usually misses, and only makes Vampire stronger when it does hit. Never hit with Rush thank goodness(adds HP Sap effect, which is a pain in the ass. You very quickly lose HP for the entirety of the battle). Not too difficult.

Time to level up and stuff..see if I can get by the ****ing Jackanapes.

Alright, Jackanapes aren't happening anytime soon. Even once I can take a hit from them, the second I hit them they berserk me. Yeah, I'll need another method that I can't do quite yet.

Leveled up to 19. There is a Blue Spell I can get here, but doing so would require breaking the rules, since only a thunder attack triggers it. Not to mention it's Exploder, which is useless as fuck for a solo game.

Liquid Flame
Boss is level 19. Goblin Punch spam wrecked his shit. Got knocked to double digit HP once, but a Vampire quickly solved that.

Managed to snag the Elven Mantle and Main Gauche on the way out. Fuck getting Death Claw right now. Aera is a nice addition to my spell list however.

Fought a Dhorme Chimera on the way to the library to grab Aqua Breath. between the Elven mantle, the Main Gauge, and natural evade stat, the boss missed 99% of it's physical attacks, though the ones that did hit stung quite a bit...for him when Vampire hit him. This Blue Magic would be incredibly handy in a boss battle a bit later, even if it's 38 MP cost makes it a nonoption at the moment.

An upcoming enemy has the Level 5 Doom Blue magic that would be very helpful...but unfortunately, in order to learn it, he has to be affected by it, and since it's a solo game....yeah, that's kind of out. I could have someone throw a Phoenix Down at him after he gets hit and have him end the fight...but eh....I'll think about it. There's also apparently another Blue Magic here, but I need another class to actually have them use it, so no dice just yet.

Well, grabbed it, it'll be very handy much later. And by some odd miracle got Moon Flute as well. Well, I won't complain. Before heading further in, I should make sure I can't be Level 5 Doom'd anymore. Leveled to 22(leveled to an oddly specific number, you can see where this is going).

Huh, that's a random place for a bo-OH FUCK

Ifrit
Goblin Punch, Goblin Punch, Vampire, dead.

Yay, obtained Ifrit to summon :\.

Byblos-2 reset
First reset was from being retarded and Berserking myself by mistake. Second try I find out I can't target anyone but my own party with Moon Flute ;. Yeah, I'm going to need to level for this. Which sucks since the enemies inside the library give shit for EXP. Guess I'll have to level outside and come back.
Leveled to 24. Let's try that again.
Went well. 3 Goblin punches took him down. Luckily, I never saw Discord(halves your level), and he immediately opened up with Magic Hammer, so I didn't have to wait for it to get it added to my arsenal.

Went and grabbed the Dark Spark blue magic. Would be handy later.

Sandworm
This boss is considered a Desert type creature. Aqua Breath has a hidden property that makes it deal 8x damage against Desert Creatures. OHKO.

Crayclaw-2 reset
Holy damn. Got rocked on my first try. HP Sap move followed immediatly by his attack that drops me to single digits. Gonna need some luck here.
3rd try, i decided "Fuck it" and grabbed a calculator. Halved his level twice, then Level 5 Doom killed him, had 9 HP left. Damn Tail Screw.

While I have the airship, I need to do a fuckload of money grinding for a boss coming up, so might as well get started now. 100,000 gil for the two pieces of equipment I need.

This post has been edited by English Language on Jul 6 2012, 12:30:19 AM

Leveled to 34 grabbing the damn things.

Adamantoise
Level 5 Death

Leveled to 36.

Picked up Missle from the Rocket Launcher fights, then fought the Flamethrowers with the Fire Ring equipped, getting the Flamethrower Blue Magic. Took the Rocket Launchers and Flamethrowers out with Vampire/Dark Spark+Level 5 Death respectively.

Sol Cannon-1 reset
Angel Ring needed to counter the Old status effect, which would completely wreck this fight.
2 Aqua Breaths killed the side cannons, Goblin Punch took out the main gun. The only threat was getting hit by the Beam Cannon after getting missiled(the missiles deal 50% current health, the main gun charges for a few turns than blasts you for 50% MAX health)

Picked up Level 4 Quarter from the Ghidra enemy.

Archeoaevis-5 reset
Boss has 5 phases. Last phase is cheap sicne it like sot hit you with Sap, then Maelstrom. Took a few tries, but managed to get knocked to single digits, then a few lucky ????s finished it.

To the meteorite bosses.

Titan
A few ????s, a Vampire to heal, then an Aera finished him off.

Purobolos x6
2 Aqua Breaths

Manticore
Missile took off 3/4th of it's HP. Anything else afterwards will take it out really.

World 2 go

I enjoy reading it so far but how did you get Level 5 Death now in a solo run? How do you plan to get Death Claw as well? Also, did you run into any Skull Eaters?

This post has been edited by Clinton on Jul 6 2012, 01:42:20 PM

Level 5 Death I got unfairly I'll admit. I had one party member alive and had them Phoenix Down me after I got it.
Death Claw I'm unsure of getting atm, since the single digit HP thing I could counter easily if not for the additional Paralyze effect. And no, I avoided the **** out of Skulleaters.

Gilgamesh Round 2
Round 1 is just Galuf and not really worth mentioning.
Magic hammered him till he ran out of MP(apparently he knows Goblin Punch and Aera. Handy if I missed them earlier). Followed by my own Goblin Punch spam+Vampire if I need to heal(which I did, even though plenty of his attacks missed) and plenty of Aeras. Was surprised at how much damage Jump did, then went ahead and turned all that damage into health for me, and damage for him.

Done with this shit topic

CHEATER!

Fuck that, I'm not going to try to fight Atmos normally.

Only pussies cheat against Atmos.

Well fine, I'll try him a few times normally.

Tyrannosaurus
Treated the same as any Undead boss.

Also, fuck Chicken Knife, real men Brave Blade.

Eh, Chicken Blade is definitely useless for Blue Mages(they mostly use Goblin Punch in place of physical attacks, but Chicken Knife's attack value for Goblin Punch is set to 1 for some reason, and never goes up), and I've run too much for Brave Blade to be of any use, so

This post has been edited by English Language on Jul 6 2012, 06:39:09 PM

Well, seems Blue Mages can't equip the Brave Blade anyways.

Good luck

Well, the only thing I could try is leveling to 41(Atmos's level) and spam Goblin Punch, but I'd only last until he removed the rest of my party from play and started spamming Comet. One suggestion I saw doesn't really jive with the solo aspect(going into the fight with only one person dead, kill them one at a time one Atmos takes out the current one) and probably going to be a last resort.

Before powerleveling though, I'll try going into the fight at shit health and spamming ???? and see if I can kill him. Biggest problem is Atmos starts the fight under the Haste effect, which already limits how fast I can kill him.

Anywho

Dragon Pod + Dragon Flower x5-10 resets
This fight was a pain. The Bone Mail is pretty much required in this fight, but also makes it difficult since Elixirs will knock you to 1 health. Also, apparently the flowers ignore any evasion you have. The Paralyze flower in particular will murder you by paralyzing you, then everything else mobbing you while it keeps you stunlocked, and killing any flowers just makes the Pod revive them. So a Missile to rip off 8000 of the Pod's health, a few Vampires after I got stunlocked and beaten down to very low health, then an Aqua Breath wiped out the bunch(the flowers only have about 100 HP each). Saving because I am not doing that fight again.

Gilgamesh Round 3 + Enkidu-2 reset
Ugh. First roder of business, draining his MP. He has Death Claw, which is very ahndy, but I have no defense against the Paralyze effect and he will just end me afterwards. He also has Missile, but that's not too big of a deal. Once I'm confident he's down enough, then I just start spamming Goblin Punch until Enkidu shows up. Then get rid of his magic as well. Not too bad. First reset from getting Death Clawed, second from forgetting Enkidu knows Vampire and will use it.

Now to farm Reflect Knights until they drop a Reflect Ring.

Fought the Gigas enemies here till I got Off-Guard, might be handy later.

Atomos-5 resets
Well, this is going pretty badly so far. First try I remembered him being vulnerable to Sleep, tried to whack him with the Sleep Blade until it worked, got Slowed, then Cometed. How about my ???? idea?
Ok, that's definitely not going to work. Having only 4 tries to whack him with ~1200 damage a shot barely makes a dent in his ~20,000 HP. Given that, I doubt even the earlier "kill one at a time" thing would help much.

Ok, gonna try leveling up then.

Ok, now let's try this. 3264 damage a hit. Had time for four attacks before I was eventually wiped out. Meaning I need to squeeze an extra 3 attacks in somewhere to beat him without instant death :\. Given Blue Mage's speed and Atmos's Auto-Haste, this seems...unlikely.

Well, I said I'd try and I did. I'll keep a save back here just in case, but I don't see any way to beat him fairly as a Blue Mage without breaking some rule. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to shoot them off, I'll try em a few times, but until then, moving on to fights I know I can win.

Guardian Crystals-1 reset
Not too bad. Whack the top crystal until it starts casting it's fire spells+Flame Ring=free healing all fight. Only reset was from the game cheating and skipping the fire crystals turn . Picked up Aeroga though. That and my new Air Knife mean serious damage is gonna happen.

There's a dude I followed who did solo runs of all the ffv classes, documented them all, pictures and lengthy texts and explanations. If you'd like to cheat, I could fetch his atmos strategy. Probably involves getting lucky with Dancing Dirk.

EDIT: The actual way he does it is rather clever.

This post has been edited by Shokwave18 on Jul 7 2012, 07:06:16 AM

Damn, even shit like Berserker?

Yep, he did almost everything.

This dude?:http://www.garath.net/Sullla/FF/finalfantasy.html

Yeah, him. Really entertaining reads, all of them.

Yeah, part of the reason I don't want to do a Berserker myself is after reading one run where he had to be level 83 to beat the Sol Cannon boss.

Yeah, the strat there is how I killed Atmos. I'm open to other ideas, but until then, meh.

The reason I wanted you to do Berserker was because of the one run where he had to be level 83 to beat the Sol Cannon boss.

Yeah, that's too much time for me, lol

Picked up Level 2 Old and White Wind on my trip up Castle ExDeath.(White Wind can be gotten by using a Dancing Dagger. The Tempting Tango will Confuse it and make it cast White Wind on you). Highly doubting my chances of defeating Gilgamesh here tbh, so probably skipping him. Will try a few more times, but meh.

Holy fuck

Gilgamesh Round 4-5 resets
I managed to beat him. Sadly, I forgot to stock up on Mallets and spent half the fight Mini'd. First I hit him with ~4-5 Dark Sparks to half his level to give his worst attacks less of a chance to hit. Then Magic Hammered his Mp away, then Goblin Punched him to death. By this point, he hit with me with a Discord or two so I had to kill him 78 damage at a time. Was funny. Even managed to egt the Lullipun Lyric BM.

ExDeath-12 reset
Tried going in with a Reflect Ring on, but I really want Level 3 Flare by the end of this fight, sooooo gonna need to get hit by it. Level 2 Old to help slow him down(Level X spells pierce through any Resistance or Magic Evade). Almost had it on the 4th try,a nd would have if I threw an Elixir on myself. Whoops. Won on 8th try, but didn't get Level 3 Flare. As it turns out, I have EXACTLY enough Mp to Level 2 Old him, then Aeroga until he dies. All that needs to happen is not getting Doom'd, and getting hit by Level 3 Flare at some point. At try 13, finally had the perfect line-up to get both and killed him. Bout damn time. Took 3 Elixirs, but it was worth it.

Gargoyles x2
Annoying. Killing one causes the other to instantly revive it. But they're level 33 so Level 3 Flare spam ololol.

Melusine
Meh. magic Hammered until her forms were out of MP and Goblin Punched.

Will pick this up later.

Good job so far

Also enjoyed reading this:
http://www.garath.net/Sullla/FF/finalfantasy.html

I wonder if Brave Blade would work with Goblin Punch at full power if a Blue Mage could equip it? Considering how Chicken Knife is at base 1 no matter what with Goblin Punch I have to bet that Brave Blade would be at its base power no matter what with Goblin Punch.

Makes enough sense I guess.

Actually, that's an easily solved question. Simply throw !Blue on a Freelancer, give them the Brave Blade and try Goblin Punch. Obviously if it worked, I wouldn't be using it for the challenge, but still.

Almost 2000 damage..yep, ti works fine.

Also picked up Mighty Guard from Stingray. Confused it on the first Dancing Dagger attempt.

Awesome, another reason to play FFV again I guess. Like I needed on though to play my favorite FF. Got to love this topic though, I have always dismissed most Blue magic in the game.

Blue Mages are actually one of my favorite FF classes ever. Despite some being obnoxious to pick up, they are easily one of the most versatile classes given that they have an excellent mix of damage dealing spells, status spells, buffs(Big/Mighty Guard especially, which is better in a non-solo game since it targets the entire party), and healing.

I never said they weren't good because I'm aware of things like Mighty Guard and such as well, but my view on them was "why cast White Wind when I have Cure 3" and such for example.

Oh right.

Wendigo-1 reset
Dark Spark followed by Level 3 Flare. it targets all the copies, so they still counter with Frost, but Flame Rings nullify Ice damage, so whatever. Learned Mind Blast which does unblockable damage and Paralyze. Nice.

Next the Fork Tower. First gonna send my solo character up one side, thenr eset, send the other three up it, then my solo on the second side(just gonna cheat to get the three past, don't feel like powerleveling them just get them through this one part)

Omniscient
Omni has a crippling weakness to Air element. Not that tough. Reflect Ring helped through the entire magic tower luckily. Never hit me once. Finished himself off with Flare funny enough.

Reset

Minotaur-2 resets
Since no magic, I can swap the Aegis Shield out for the better Crystal Shield. high Evade+Chicken Knife wrecked his shit(or did when it didn't keep trying to run me away from the fight).

Triton, Neried and Phobos-1 reset
Have 0 healing items by the time I got here(the whole room being lava covered is BS). Flame Ring let me steal heals off their Firaga, and Aeroga spam killed all three at the same time. Oh fuck I need to get out of here now.

Leviathan
Because why not? Coral Ring negates his water attacks. Aeroga spam kills him, though I needed Mighty Guard and a bunch of Ethers to have enough MP to do it.

Think I'll sell some of my excess equipment and head on to the last dungeon.

Ah, that's true. Depending the HP of the caster, White Wind can heal for a lot, since you could just throw a mega heal on them, then they'll cast White Wind and refill the party health. Though admittedly FFV's White Wind is much less useful than FFVII's since it doesn't cure statuses.

Oh, and White Wind does let you heal with Reflect on. There's that too. So yeha, plenty of better options, but they have their uses.

Calofisteri
This could take a while. Bone Mail pretty much eliminates any threats she might have. After she ran out of MP, I just had to hold the A and [Speed Up] button on the emulator until I finally plinked her to death with the Chicken Knife.

Apanda
Flash to reduce his physical attacks, Mighty Guard to protect from what I AM hit by(and to reduce the chance of his other magic hitting). Aeroga spam.

Azulmagia
Blue Magic duel.
Hitting him with Level 3 Flare causes him to start spamming it. The Reflect Ring meant he would keep hitting himself with it. Not a hard fight. He actually ended up killing himself with a last Level 3 Flare.

Catastrophe
Complete joke. Casting Mighty Guard before the fight, then battling him causes him to do nothing but spam 100G to negate your Levitate, which reflects back to him. So I just basically pick him to death however I like. Also, I found that like the Brave Blade, Goblin Punch ignores the special conditions for the Excalipoor and does regular damage with it. Fun.

Halicarnassus
Reflect cripples her biggest attack(Holy). She pretty much Holy's herself to death while I kept healthy with White Wind.

Twintania
It opened the fight by Atomic Ray which reflected back at it, then countering it's attack with Megaflare, which also reflected. Hah. it did that for a bit, then charged up for Gigaflare, at which point I used Level 5 Death and killed it.

Gilgamesh, Final Round
Eh, not too big. We trade blows for a bit, I Vampire whenever he hits and fight ends after a bit.

Necrophobe
Mighty Guard helps. First try ended in disaster when I tried to Aeroga the group, and had all 4 hits reflected back at me for OHKO. Chicken Knife+Vampire wrecked the Barriers(after the first two died, the second two were out of MP). Necrophobe himself fell to a bunch of Aerogas. Then Gilgamesh comes in and does his thing.

Well, probably going to level a bit before heading off to the last fight.

I just realized, I never grabbed the Legendary Weapons. Oops.

After leveling, and running out to farm a fuckton of Elixirs, show time.

Exdeath, Round 2-2 resets
Well, the tree itself isn't too difficult. White Hole is the biggest threat. Mighty Guard and Chicken Knife and/or Aeroga spam helped loads to whittle his health down, chugging Elixirs when my MP got low.

Neo ExDeath-10 resets
Magic Lamp x3 to severely damage all parts+instakill Part 4 to get rid of Delta Attack. Then got rid of part 1 with more Aeroga spam to egt rid of Grand Cross. After that, made sure to wipe out the last 2 parts close together. Wasn't too hard, but a series of unlucky breaks kept getting me killed, lol.

Well, that's finished. I actually liked this. Might have to do another one.

Doing Cannoneer next. Will probably keep updating this topic instead of opening a new topic every time.

Cannoneer updates

Karlabos
Open Fire OHKOs him. Does around 500-700 damage at this point. Shit.

Siren
Open Fire confuses her. I let her punch herself. Next Open Fire ends the fight. Reset to do the fight again and win a Broze Shield, since the Broze Armor is useless to Cannoneers.

Magissa & Forza-1 reset
Reset until I didn't OHKO her. Then Opened Fire on her, then Forza.

Garula
Open Fire hits and applies Death status.

Well my point was that I was sort of overlooking their uses. I mean I was aware of things like Mighty Guard, Magic Hammer, Level 5 death, and so on, but I did sort of turn away from things like Goblin Punch, some properties of White Wind, ????, Vampire, Flamethrower, and several other things due to just not looking hard enough.

Kind of neat seeing what White Wind can really do (heal while wearing Bonemail, I didn't know that!)

Oh and good job as well.

This post has been edited by Clinton on Jul 8 2012, 09:36:48 PM

Ah. Well neat anyways . Forgot about the Bone Mail thing though. That would have been great to know a few times