Part 4: You Say Potayto, I say Potayto

Final Fantasy VIII: Fisherman's Horizon - This music also played in Duncan's house; it's the World of Balance town music replacement.



Is that a...potato rolling down the street?



No, I must've been imagining it...



Final Fantasy VII - Stolen Materia - This song fits pretty well with the rest of VI's music in my opinion.

Whatever, let's get some of that amazing tea. I hate tea.







THERE'S ANOTHER DOGGO! This must be his chew toy. I didn't even think dogs drank tea.




Wait why are all the characters reacting so strangely? Have they never seen a dog in a cafe before?



My what nice eyes you have...? I think I need to go outside for some fresh air and looting, I'm clearly hallucinating.



In addition to these two items, I also snagged:

Leather Hat
Green Cherry
Antidote
Shuriken x2



I forgot to grab a pic of the Cotton Robe; it has worse defenses and also starts the user in Sleep status. If you guessed that was the item making Kumama fall asleep in the mines, congratulations! You paid more attention than I did! The Chocobo Brsh is Relm's starter weapon and is unchanged from vanilla. The 2-hand effect is even there in case you need to paint a really big frame.



We're also going to rob the rich and probably toss their garbage in the ocean.



Imp Halberds are sometimes useful but often not. This one has a -10 Magic Block so is extra useless. If we're lucky it will sell for a boatload of money.

I also found:
Fenix Down
AutoCrossbow
Iron Armor
Fire Skean
Flash



The basement has an alright relic. You can use it remove Blind and Poison status out of combat by equipping it. You wouldn't want to keep this one equipped as it reduces your Magic Power; the only situation you would is if you were predicting a monster that uses Zombie attacks as you can't change a Zombie's equipment to heal that status.



Someone at this house hasn't been taking care of the plants growing in the basement and they've gone feral.

A special move that inflicts Stop is annoying; thankfully they don't have a ton of hitpoints and I'm able to end the battle quickly. Readers familiar with the intricacies of the Rage system might be looking googly-eyed at that Rage skill. All in good time, readers. Let's barrel our way out and go shopping with our newfound wealth.



I only pick up a Magus Hat and Hair Band for now, as no one can use the other weapons available.



Magus Hat has slightly higher defenses and an extra +1 Vigor which is nothing special but the Hair Band has a bit higher defense and +2 to Speed!



The Item shop has double priced Tonics. In my eternal wisdom, I didn't buy any Tonics at Figaro Castle in the hopes that Sun Bath would carry me through. Here, I buy some Antidotes and Softs because Mt. Kolts can get a little hectic.

The relic shop has some relics I didn't buy due to lack of funds, as I wanted to see what the Mithril Vest had to offer.



It wasn't worth it at all. Less Magic Defense and -1 Stamina, only currently used by Saber. Stamina is pretty useless, at least.


If you're worried about death attacks (which includes things like Break, W Wind, Demi, etc.) then you're better off getting something with Instant Death protection to just avoid it entirely. The various attacks that leak HP don't do enough damage to worry about and Regen is an OK thing to have instead of something you aim for.



Let's blow this joint.

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest - Rock Theme - It's no Techno de Chocobo but still very jaunty and a solid tune for a chocobo ride.



Though our time was short, I will miss you little green friend.



Final Fantasy IV: Tower of Babel - Towers are kinda like mountains if you think about it.



I've always loved Malboro sprites.

Nothing scary butt their asses are covered.



Who is this crazy bastard standing at the edge of a pretty big drop? And who goes mountain climbing in a jaunty hat?



Whatever, we have new friends to chitchat with.

Entirely average but this fight does let me show off Near Death status a little.



Saber is wearing a Barrier Ring, which gives them Protect status when at Near Death. Saber has plenty of hit points but the enemy attack has put them into Near Death anyway. If I had used Fight and gotten lucky, Saber might have pulled off Terra's Desperation Attack.

This fight on the outside of the mountain is a muse for Saber, teaching them the Rock Conga dance.

This seed hasn't been particularly kind to the Dance command. The first two abilities aren't that great. Plasma and Whump are really good but they will rarely appear. All four of these abilities are normal Dances from vanilla though they're more spread out there.



Guardian here is almost entirely vanilla, in its vanilla spot. An extra +1 Stamina and 4 less Attack. I've gotten Guardian in this spot a ton of times in previous seeds.



Here's a shot of Sun Bath's heal, restoring almost 3x the amount of max HP everyone has.



This Blossom is a pretty severe downgrade, losing 8 Attack and a whopping -10% Evade! In vanilla it has the Wind element but this version is Ice.





Attack x3.5 and Blizzard are both very very powerful. A shame they're neutered by the monster's 1 Attack and Magic Power.







Awww look, a couple tiny dolls and a ball they're playing with! Luau Lon are the tiny little cuties, Fenrip is their magical animated ball.

Not especially dangerous, just annoying in that they make running harder. The Luau Lons have a decent Attack for this point of the game that gels well with their x2.5 special.



This game has a lot of dogs and birds.

Poison and Imp are annoying. Poison makes the screen go blurry when you move and Imp removes your ability to do anything but Fight, Item, and the Imp spell if you have it. It persists after combat.



Ranma learned Rasp and Safe at level 9. Rasp drains MP from the target but unlike Osmose, it drains a set amount and doesn't give it back to the caster of Rasp. It only has a Spell Power of 10 so generally you're removing 100~ MP. Some monsters, even bosses, die at 0 MP and will often have less MP than HP. This can be useful if you're fighting something that absorbs all the damage you do.



Imp is real obnoxious and I tried to bribe the enemies to go away. GP Rain throws GP equal to the user's Level x 30.

As SSNeoman mentioned earlier, GP Rain can really save your bacon in a fight. I'm hitting these enemies for 135 damage each, just over half their total.



At this point I notice one of the enemies had dropped a Jewel Ring. This is entirely vanilla. The description says it protects against Blind as well but this is a lie, as evidenced by the Effect window. Not sure if that's a bug in the original or just a bad description.



Fuck Mt. Kolts.



Hey what happened to the bard? Did you eat them?



Wow how rude, I'm just passing through.

Vargas is way tuned down from vanilla, in an effort to make him actually beatable. Normally you would get a few hits on him after killing the bears, Sabin would come in, and a Pummel Blitz would end the fight immediately. Here you're not guaranteed to get a Blitz on your Sabin replacement so Vargas has had his HP cut from the normal 11,600. Instead, you need to do a randomized amount of damage to have Sabin appear. If you have a good skill, you can kill him outright and Sabin just appears in your party aftward.

I can't bear to watch.



A couple of FlaPears later and our hero comes to save us from...someone not all that threatening really.



Taiga does have a pretty striking battle pose at least.

Final Fantasy VI: Save Them This actually plays later in the game at certain points.



I start with a hefty Jump. I wish I had a Heavy Shield leftover in the inventory to do a Super Jump but alas. I've definitely had worse skills for Sabin at this point, several of them leading to a wipe.



Just a few bops on the head is all it takes.



Hey remember how Gau was broken in vanilla? Rage is (or at least potentially is) even more broken in BC. Monster skills are way more varied than Vanilla. We'll go over Rages in detail in the next update.

Magic Power is a little low but Vigor is high and Speed is through the roof! 65 is crazy high at this point in the game.



Taiga arrived with a slightly above normal Silk Robe with an extra spicy +10 Evade over vanilla.



The last chest of this update is a claw, not equipable by anyone we currently have access to. These have 15 higher Attack than normal with the same Holy element.



This is real fucked up, not gonna lie. I'm going to assume the rabbits (Raga) are running from the floating disembodied head of a Somouro.

I don't like either of these. Blizzard hurts and attack x3.5 doesn't feel good either. Both these monsters put the Zil Joing to shame.



Can you tell that I didn't heal after the Vargas fight? Whatever, I'll just reload the save state.



FUCK OFF



Good lord we finally made it, fuck the wildlife.