Part 17: Dullahan is Dullahard

Hello again, and welcome to this update that is super short but somehow has a ton of screenshots.



We move our mechanical wonder of a castle to the other side of the map.



Sieryla has a Damage x3 attack but otherwise isn't dangerous. Sacrepi, however, has a Damage x4.5 Rage that it shares with a Battle command. Battle is just a regular attack but it's way better than something useless like Imp or Reflect???.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjwjZ9rUzHk
Legend of Mana - Nostalgic Song


The water here looks like the Ohio River. I wouldn't drink either of them.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMGoQtn27pU
Secret of Mana - Dancing Beasts

The old coot's house, which is story relevant later, has a hidden chest by the back door. It should've stayed hidden.



Look! A unique sprite!




Somehow we convince them to come with us, and they show off the location of a tomb we can rob on the way.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV2zr7N1lO0
Final Fantasy VI - Edgar and Sabin

Kaoru has Phoenix (the esper) + Acid Rain as a combo.

A Spell Power of 25 isn't all that great but as I recall, Phoenix does damage as well so I load them up on magic boosting gear. They can't equip any espers yet but also don't have a Magic command so it's not QUITE so harsh.



The Cair has a special attack called "Exploder" that simply makes the target go into Vanish status. Sounds like some kind of magic trick.



They also do El Nino which hurts a lot.




Weird, Phoenix didn't do any damage. Maybe it missed somehow?



...oh right. The Final Fantasy V version of Phoenix does damage, this one only revives dead things. Whoops! It could come in handy as an "undead check" at least. I can also single/multi target it onto my own party so if I can get Poison/Water absorbtion, that would be neat.



The Plungf has 9,668 HP and would have been the perfect test for Phoenix as it is undead. I completely forget to do so.



Time to Indiana Jones some artifacts.



The official translation is "Darill", as seen here in the location text. Setzer, in the vanilla SNES text, refers to her as Daryl. I can only imagine the time crunch Ted Woolsey was under while translating.



This sort of thing would absolutely keep me away from any tombs. They cast Sun Bath a lot.



Another auto-Vanish monster. It has Evil Toot which is mean but they also both have less than 400 HP and don't negate Wind damage.



I always hate seeing this enemy sprite. It's a very good sprite but usually indicates a monster that will fuck you up.



Usually but not always. Only 1800 HP and auto-Blind status.



God I'm so sick of this encounter.



I honestly don't think I ever used this armor in the vanilla game. It actually turns your sprite into a Moogle!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ia1pBPNw4Q
Final Fantasy IX - Festival of the Hunt

Our Moogles are... clocks. Could be worse I guess? The Kaund is yet another Damage x5 special, with Aero as the second command and 7748 HP. Esot doesn't really have a lot going on. Vaune is a dick.








At least the group dropped us a command changer! Carbunkl doesn't really need to be cast twice in a row. It could be useful in a fight where the enemy negates Wind and also casts magic, as Carbunkl uses Reflect on the entire party.



This looks expensive!



What's that rumble?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM7bYQLI5A4
Legend of Mana - Pain the Universe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNeO7_Oq1cc - Watch me die a whole bunch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlMElZrnjUk - Watch me (eventually) kill this boss.



Dullahan doesn't use it very often but Wei isn't a fan.



Serena goes with the Sacrepi Rage, giving them a Damage x4.5 and Battle command. Dullahan negates Wind, meaning all three of my x5 Rages have issues in this fight. Damage x4.5 is good enough.



Almost every single attack that hits Dullahan results in a counter for 173-273~ damage. This includes any magic reflected off my Wall Rings.



Assassin daggers can be used as items in battle, casting Bolt 3 and getting used up. Dullahan isn't even weak to Lightning!



Remember when I said Reflect??? is pretty useless? That doesn't apply when it's used against us. This casting only affected Kaoru but Dullahan uses it often. It inflicts Blind, Silence, and Slow on anyone it hits because of those Wall Rings I'm wearing to survive Ice 3 and Pearl. Never a Dull-ahan moment around here.



Magicite uses a random Summon from any in the game except Odin and Raiden. It also won't summon the four GBA exclusive Espers (Gilgamesh, Cactuar, Leviathan, Diabolos) in that game. This isn't the worst outcome but it wasn't that great either.



Dullahan has nine attacks, including just a regular Battle command. They're all terrible for me.



Ice 3 is bad in that it does very little damage.



At least this HP Drain attack is pretty weak.



If you watched the failure video, you may notice Serena healing Dullahan for 3.5k with their Rage. I had a Graedus equipped which has a Pearl element, which Dullahan absorbs. Sad times.




If this was FFV, Antlion would probably just remove that character from the battle forever. FFV does not fuck around. I believe I still had a Memento Ring equipped on Wei which should block this. That or I just got lucky when Wei was hit with it.



You know things are desperate when you have to rely on FenixDowns to revive often.



God this guy is such a bag of HP that I start throwing whatever I can from my inventory.



Then he immediately heals most of it back!



I have the Dragon Horn on Kaoru, allowing them to attack multiple times while Jumping. They do respectable damage on each hit.



Finally one last reflected Ice 3 does 400~ damage and takes Dullahan down. I looked him up after:

Thirty seven thousand HP! I forgot until after the battle that vanilla Dullahan dies at 0 MP, which I think still always carries over to BC. With all those expensive spells, he was probably pretty close to running out of MP and dying anyway. If I had had a source of Rasp this fight would've been a lot easier.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SHOEqqdva0
Final Fantasy VI - Searching For Friends

While I'm disappointed that BC didn't give me a randomized overworld theme for either one in the World of Ruin, I can't be too upset because this song is so god damned good. It really changes and sets the tone. Initially in the WoR you have that horribly depressing music as all hope seems lost. Then you find a couple friends, then a means of transport and everyone is motivated to find the rest of the characters and maybe help this world out.

I still hold out hope that someday we'll get a decent remake of VI. They could do it in the style of Octopath Traveller, even.



What's this robot doing here?



That Magic Power is pretty average but hello 40 speed and ALSO two amazing forms of magic. Scar isn't a natural mage and can only equip Kirin so far but I won't say no to Cure 2.




They also come with a really good selection of Lores. Pearl Wind heals the entire party by an amount equal to the caster's current HP, Big Guard casts Shell and Safe on the entire party, and Quasar does a significant amount of non-elemental damage. They all cost a large amount of MP but I have a Gold Hairpin floating around that can solve that issue if need be.



For now, I load Scar down with as much magic boosting equipment as I can.

As for Scar already being on the Airship, there is a little weirdness. In the World of Balance, you get your Gau replacement automatically because treasure/shop randomization could potentially leave you without Dried Meat to recruit them. Gau in the World of Ruin can lead to problems behind the scene with Leap, so they're just shoved into the Airship automatically. This version of BC also randomizes the location of most characters so we actually ended up with Locke's replacement! The most significant thing about this is that we should have access to Narshe now.



The airship stops outside this town but we are free to do as we please.

As we only have four characters currently, there isn't any need to vote on which ones we take. You do get to vote on where we go, however!

Please VOTE for which location we should aim for next from this list:

Mobliz
Mt. Zozo
Cave on the Veldt
Tzen (Collapsing House)
Owzer's House
Zone Eater's Stomach
Narshe - If you choose Narshe, please also VOTE for which character we leave behind to make room for Mog: Serena, Wei, Kaoru, Scar. We will be recruiting both characters from Narshe.

For reference, we can't get the person at Fanatic's Tower as we need Relm's replacement and I refuse to do the Phoenix Cave with less than eight people. I'm not THAT big a masochist.

I'll be out of town this Wednesday to Sunday so I'll go ahead and let voting go until next Sunday, August 4th. I doubt I'll feel like doing an update that day but I will try to remember to tally up all the votes.