Part 23: In which we side-quest
Chapter 23 - In which we side-questFor this update we're not gonna do anything plot-intensive, because Good Lord last update already filled us in for 10 updates worth of plot.
ONWARD WE GO
We can take a look at the map. The two little red dots to our west are Midgar and Kalm. And yeah, we just crossed half the continent to the east and it didn't take a minute. And yes, I'm very glad, because dear lord I don't want to ever play Legend of Legaia again.
Our next destination also happens to be optional if you know what you're doing, but most players won't be able to proceed without going in it.
It's the Chocobo Farm.
If you talk to the Chocobo they'll do some horrible dancing that honestly, make zero sense to me.
The point is that you'll get the [Choco/Mog] Materia.
You might have noticed but the Choco/Mog Materia is red, and it's the first red materia we get. Red Materias are Summon Materias, which are basically strong magic with the drawback of having to watch long-ass boring animations.
The Choco/Mog is also one of the few materia in the game that grant us the Wind Element. And by few I mean two.
What Choco/Mog does is inflict damage to everyone and inflict Stop. Sometimes it will summon a fat chocobo to fall over the opponents and do more damage, but no Stop.
Otherwise, it does more damage than anything we have right now (including Quake/Matra Magic).
The Midgar Zolom is a huge-ass snake that lives in the marsh and moves around.
It's a remarkable opponent in two senses:
1) It's an enemy that you can see in the world map and actually follows you. The trick is that you have to outrun it to cross the marshes, and mounting a Chocobo allows that (although it's still possible to be catched, because she's still faster).
2) It's VERY HARD at this point in the game to fight her. And by VERY HARD I mean VERY FRIGGIN HARD. The Midgar Zolom can by all means be considered a "low-level superboss".
Of course this is all just business to Choco Bill and Choco Billy.
Apparently Sephiroth crossed the marshes too, on his own. So that's where we're going.
Because Cloud didn't die to him years ago so he's looking into fixing it. He's a glutton for punishment and his survivor's guilt is just demanding more.
Oh, well.
The [Chocobo Lure] is another very rare materia, there are few of it in the game. It's damn expensive, but like I said, it's pretty much a necessity during a normal gameplay.
To get a Chocobo, you need to fight on the Chocobo marks around the farm. You then need Chocobo Lure equipped to find Chocobos in the random battles. Greens are what you use to make Chocobos docile and wait for you while you kill the other enemies.
The more expensive the Green, the longer the Chocobo will wait for you.
Our money
We also buy a Mimett Green (yes, the expensive one), I'll explain why soon.
Yes, yes it was.
This is the marsh, and this is the lovely snake.
We don't give a shit about Chocobos though so we're gonna cross the marsh barefooted and OH GOD LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT THING
So here's the thing about the Midgar Zolom. I feel like I should dedicate some time to talk about her because people have been asking in spoiler tags since the first update, and because she's a somewhat important "superboss".
First, the little pita is a Level 26 enemy which is far higher than ours right now, but this doesn't mean much. The Midgar Zolom is FAR more powerful than Level 26 enemies are. She has 4000 HP which is also much higher than the last boss we fought.
The snake has a very strong attack that deals 400-500 damage and is obviously fast enough to get one attack every turn. If you played the game as fast as humanly possible and get to her, she will completely humiliate you. You can mitigate that damage by putting your characters on the back-row and using Sadness and the damage will go back to something manageable, like 130-180.
That attack isn't really the problem though. The problem are her counter-attacks - of which there are two.
The first counter is an attack which simply kicks one of your members out of battle. Yeah, that's it, he doesn't die, he's simply out. You can't resurrect him or jack shit. In fact, you don't even get a game-over if you lose and if the blown away member is alive, you just get back to the beginning of the marsh.
Also, she does that twice, so by the end of the battle you may have only one character.
The second counter, and her reason d'etré, is an attack called Beta, used when her HP is low. Beta is friggin insane. It does around 1100-1300 Fire Damage to everyone in your group, which is game over. Even if you survive it, it's a counter, so odds are that she'll just hit right after.
By the way, Beta is also an Enemy Skill.
So how are we gonna do this?
Remember all the Graviballs I was saving from the Train Graveyard? They do 1/4 current HP damage, but since Midgar Zolom isn't technically a Boss, they didn't give her resistance to Gravity. Which means we deal 2312 damage in the first turn
Beta is a Fire Elemental Spell, so we do Fire-Elemental on the armor to halve the damage, plus Sadness to reduce it by 30% again. Then we use it back against her, and voilà, FUCK YOU MIDGAR ZOLOM.
Well that was easy, wasn't it?
But before we proceed, there are two Enemy Skills that we must acquire.
The first one is L4 Suicide. L4 Suicide is an extremely situational but otherwise very powerful spell. It deals 97% of the enemy's HP of damage (I know, Jesus Christ) AND inflicts Mini, a status ailment. The problem? It only works on enemies whose level is a multiple of 4 (so 4, 8, 12, 16, etc).
Having L4 Suicide allows us to get another Enemy Skill around here...
If you equip Chocobo Lure you can fight Chocobos - that we all know.
The Chocobos have a special counter called Chocobuckle, but they only use it in two conditions. One - They have eaten a Mimett Green (or another Green that we don't have access at the moment).
The other condition? The chocobo must have ~3% Health or lower.
As you may have noticed, we're fighting a Level 16 Chocobo, so what we do is use L4 Suicide...
And it will counter with Chocobuckle, which is a fat Chocobo jumping on us. Yay!
As you may have guessed Chocobuckle is a Enemy Skill, albeit a fairly useless one - The damage dealt is the amount of times you have escaped from battle. It's a neat little spell to have though, even if just for fun.
I think we're good to go now. Let's cross the marsh and move on.
Wait what
Jesus Christ that's some unsettling imagery.
It's not like we didn't just completely destroy one of those.
BUT YOU JUST DID IT!! Arghhh my immersion etc.
Wait what are you doing here
Yeah fine I suppose the guy is strong to do it alone, whatever.
Anyway this whole thing about the Midgar Zolom is that you're supposed to fight her, and see how strong she is without dying to keep a nice continuity (hence why she just kicks you out), THEN you get here, see this and goes "oh, I see, that's a demonstration of power, we just tried to fight her and got kicked in the arse."
We move on and get to the Mythril Cave. This is where the guys in Kalm used to mine before they got kicked out by monsters. It's a really short and straightforward dungeon. I wouldn't even say it's a dungeon, it's just a passage really.
The cool thing about when you leave Midgar is that there's just so much random shit to do and explore, even if you're confined to a fairly linear path. Finding out these Enemy Skills we got today is a mini-game in itself.
Anyway, we find this in the cave. [Long Range] allows you to do the same damage in the back-row as you do in the front-row, and allows you to reach enemies who are far away, just like Barret does with most of his weapons.
Ohh yeah I love Matra Magic.
[Grand Glove] is one of the 30 Att tier weapons for Tifa, and we steal it from these weird golems called Madouges, just like the [Atomic Scissors] for Barret, [Hardedge] for Cloud and [Striking Staff] for Aeris. Yes, you get all of them by stealing, and they all have 4 Materia Slots, two linked and two unlinked.
Unlike the other 3, Grand Glove has 31, not 32 Attack. Still, it's a lovely update, because I forgot to equip the Mythril Claw from Kalm (24 Att).
By the way, I stockpiled a lot of Sources I found in Kalm and also forgot to use them.
They all go in Cloud obviously.
Oh shit not the Turks. So what's up guys, blowing up more cities around?
You can see Red is fairly bitter.
I think "kidnapping" is putting it more than positively, given that other than kidnapping they are also mass-murderers.
Elena is the clumsy incompetent side-kick found usually in low-budget straight-to-video movies.
Why are they explaining these things to us and not arresting the gang?
Ooooohkay...
So yeah, Elena exists to contrast with how competent the females in our group tend to be.
Hahahaha it's personal now.
Hopefully we can steal it from him and give to, I don't know, Aeris?
Yes, Tseng is the creepy kidnapper who falls in love. It's like reverse stockholm syndrome.
Fine Tseng, we're gonna throw you a bone here. SIGH.
And with that lovely exchange, we're done for this Chapter.
NEXT TIME:
NINJAS! EGGS! NINJA EGGS!
Bugs & Bytes
Jormungandr
So we know that Midgar (the city) comes from Midgard, the human realm in Norse mythology. Midgar Zolom comes from Midgardsormr which is "Serpent from Midgard", also known as Jormungandr. In the norse mythology, the Midgardsormr was a giant serpenttossed in an ocean around Midgard, as the Midgar Zolom in the Marsh lives around Midgar.
Zolom Glitches
There are two glitches coming from Midgar Zolom that I know of.
The first is that since the marsh counts as the world map, you can save in it anytime. If you quit then load back, the Midgar Zolom will return to its original position, thus making it easy for you to cross the marsh.
The second happens if the Zolom dies from poison after receiving an attack and rising the body. Instead of triggering the death animation, it will just sit there moving its head while you get the victory fanfare.
Also, spoiler alert on related videos, as usual.
For the sake of completion
Since technically she isn't a boss and just a random encounter, I'm not adding her to the official count, but JUST to make sure we're clear here:
Look, I'm no expert in holding guns, but there's something very wrong with this image here. Paging TFR:
