Part 86: Under the Sea

Chapter 85 - Under the Sea




It's time to go back to Junon and resume our actual quest. We need to get all Huge Materia to stop Shinra from saving the world.



You must be going crazy, Cloud. Everything's fine.



So, we're back to Junon. Since we're not in a hurry, let's walk around and explore a bit.





When everything's going down, I find it pretty believable a lot of people would drink themselves out.



You can never escape from bad customers. Never.





Awww... wait, what?




Hope you learned your lesson. In the case of a gigantic monster attacking your city, hide and keep studying.







Running away from us is the most believable thing anyone can do in this universe.




Oh man. This is NOT going to end well.



Oh Lord.



The battle is otherwise fairly unremarkable. They're just two random grunts, just like Cloud at Nibelheim.





Which makes this pretty depressive . It almost reminds me of Austin Powers' mocking of how random soldiers die pointlessly and we never think about it, except in this case they never even got to have a wife and kids.



We're really horrible people.



The 8inch cannon is the next step on the explosive items we've been getting since the Grenade.



Under the sea, darling it's better -



Down where it's... wait, what the hell is this again?



So, we're following a series of tunnels, going further down.



The enemies are the standard Shinra literal death machines. Some of you might know or remember that these enemies can be fought as early as the first disc by pressing the Junon Alarm. Since they're L50, they're the optimal power-leveling enemies of choice.



They're somewhat hard early on, but not anymore.



There are also Shinra SOLDIERs, the usual crew.



And further down we go...





I really like this place.



So, we finally get a different(ish) set of enemies. Of particular importance...



...is this dude. No, I don't know how it got here, but this unique-looking enemy has something curious about him.







Wait, no. Get back here.





Let's try this again. This is some nice manta ray enemy.



And back to Ghost Ship. Ghost Ship has a unique ability called Goannai, which removes a target from battle and makes it count as dead.

The problem with this ability is that Ghost Ship has the terrible habit of being the last boss of the Battle Arena at Gold Saucer. Which means - yes, you got it right, he can remove you from battle and screw you up.

That's not what's important about him, though.



He's the only enemy that can be morphed into a [Guide Book]. This is a Key Item, we don't know what it's for yet, but we will soon.



And finally, the Underwater Reactor.



I like the dirty-looking artwork in this place as well as the rest of the Shinra buildings/reactors.



This is a submarine.



That little tank looks so happy to be there. Go little tank, go!




Look at the poor thing.





And this is an evil submarine.



Well that's a self-explanatory intuitive name.



A Save Point. We must be close to a boss.



Yes, Yes I am!!



Oh cmon, I thought you wanted an autograph. I feel bad killing these goons.



At this point you could say these guys are heroes trying to save the world. The company they're working for has this plan to blow up the meteor and you see a crazy-eyed lunatic stealing the weapon they're using for no real reason, it's fairly easy to pick a side here.



The [Underwater MPs] are a little hard than the other grunts. You can also steal a [Shinra Alpha] from them.



Which is a nice armor for this part of the game. You might remember the [Shinra Beta] which was another armor we stole from the guys at the Shinra Ship, way back in Disc 1.





We're a bit too late. They're retrieving the Huge Materia already.



I knew I had seen this scene before.






And there goes the Huge Materia.




Reno is the best.



I think at this point Cloud has achieved full awareness that the Turks have no chance against them.




















Oh cmon.



Right, so we're on to our next boss.









For a lot of people, Carry Armor is one of the hardest bosses in the entire game. It combines high HP and high damage, and for the most part it will screw you up horribly. It's also fairly random - it's possible it will sit down there doing nothing, it's possible it will combo its skills and ruin your day.



Mostly because it can actually grab two of your characters and render them useless. These arms are not there just for showing.

So, for demonstration purposes, let's see what happens in an average Carry Armor fight. Let's pretend we just walked in, without the adequate preparations.






Well, that sucked.

Let's try again.







Get gigadunked.

Vincent saves the day! Lifewire does Lightning damage to all targets, which means the boss takes double damage since it's a machine.

But wait - we've come a long way since we fought machines back in Midgar. Is this the best we can do?







Now that's more like it. So, how did that happen?

For starters we need to boost someone's Magic Attribute. To that end I picked up Cid and went with his Partisan (6 linked slots, +17 Magic), Wizard Bracelet as armor (8 linked slots, +20 Magic) and Cursed Ring accessory (+35 Magic) for a total of 72 Magic.



Then I went for the high-Magic materias. Ultima for example gives +4 Magic.



That's another 14 Magic, for +86 total so far.



We put in two Magic Plus materias. One is Mastered, the other is at level 2, for a total +70% Magic. Which results in...



252 Magic, just three short of 255 (the maximum amount). We could get to 255 if we grinded but it wouldn't make much difference at this point. We're good.



Our first key materia is Quadra Magic. Quadra Magic casts four times but halves the damage, so it gives us twice the damage, normally. However, since damage caps at 9999, for us to kill Carry Armor (24k health) we'll need to do 12k damage per Bolt, which means we'll get a lot more mileage from Quadra Magic than we normally would.



Last we use MP Turbo, which increases our damage output by 40% at this level, which is pretty much mandatory for us to reach our goal. That's still not enough - we need two [Hero Drinks], but with all these together we manage to hit ~6000 per bolt which totals 24k, enough for us to blow up the boss in one Quadra Magic-Bolt 3.



Killing Carry Armor yields us the [God's Hand], a weapon for Tifa, which we most likely won't be using since it's not like we don't have plenty of overpowered weapons for her already.



And with that, we conclude this update.



Next time:

Hot underwater pursuit! Submarines! Huge Materias!