Part 23: A Possessed Painting Is Never Late, Nor Is It Early, It Arrives Precisely When It Means To!

Hey look, an update that definitely isn't late!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMsTXVQmiQY
Chrono Cross - Hydra Marshes

The lights in Owzer's House are off. Things are ominous.



Robots are naturally afraid of the dark and I would never want to terrify a robot on purpose.



I honestly have idea what this sprite is supposed to be. Are those giant lips? A prolapsed eye? This is probably a Japanese thing.

Also, hilariously, they have 1 ATK and 9 MPOW. And Fire 3/Meteo but they never used em. Some painting guardians.



11,445 HP and they can use Shrapnel. Shrapnel fucking hurts and these birbs will show up again in the Final Dungeon. I can't wait!



Spooky chair!



We'll go over the Dwaryk in a second, I just want to point out a neat little thing about the Gypsy.

Yeah, we'll be going back to Owzer's at some point.



The Dwaryk can come in packs of four. They have 8495 HP and stats that aren't TOO bad. What IS bad is their counter attack when you hit any of them. They ALL respond with Step Mine.



Every



Single



Time



They also spam L.5 Doom and Blaster, with some Breaks scattered in. Eventually, I figured out that they aren't immune to Confuse so Stone spam from Lore works mostly well enough.



Oh boy! A treasure chest with some monster in it!



Oh no!

I found out, later, that OBS never actually recorded sound. I put in the battle music but there won't be any sound effects. There is also a spot of fast forwarding in there because my brain was off, sorry!



Yikes. I'm glad this one doesn't use Wind Slash THAT often.



Even Fuuko throwing themselves at the boss doesn't do much. Yet.



Funnily enough, it doesn't absorb Wind either, just Water.



It also...Muddles itself? If it actually were vulnerable to Confuse this would be quite a gimme battle.



Imp Song, however, does properly target the party. Imp is dumb and stupid.



Aqua Rake is still very dangerous but not as bad as Wind Slash.



Fuuko's greatest weapons are still their friends, literally.



Oh. Another ill-timed Aqua Rake wiped the rest of the party. Guess I'll let it play out.



We're in a big damage race here, folks. Fuuko slams for max damage, Blue Dragon counters for 1. It's a nail biter.



I'm OK with this drop! I don't know if I'll actually use it before the final battle but I like having them.

Blue Dragon is one of the weaker dragons; in fact I only just noticed now that you can actually run from it.



Great. All these floating chests have these assholes. The Eberarmag isn't so bad at least.

Head Band
Potion
Crystal Helm
Buckler

Cool. Great treasures.



GET OUTTA MY WAY, MAMMOTH.



Ew. They have Exploder and WaveCannon with 5118 HP. That's probably instant death for my entire team, WaveCannon hurts.




Oh.



Playing this on a tiny CRT when I was younger, I always thought Owzer was much fatter than he is. Still a weird sprite, it's like he doesn't have any head above his eyes and I can't tell if that's a bean bag or a cape.



Before we can meet our friend, we have to kill a demon.



Chadarnook sucks in Beyond Chaos. Real bad. She's fine in vanilla because you generally have a lot more options.

Here's an 18 minute video of me getting frustrated trying to kill the boss.

Honestly it's not a hard boss just annoying with the gimmick. It couldn't kill me either.



The gimmick is that the Lady changes into a Demon. You can kill the Lady but she always heals and you can't win the fight by killing her. You have to kill the Demon, who changes back to the lady after a preset amount of time or a certain number of attacks, whichever is first.



It's a cool effect and a great idea for a boss! Just.. not with my party.



Serena's ?-Aero is a godsend because Demon is weak to Wind but they never bothered casting it more than 2-3 times each. If I'd gotten a lucky streak of ten or so, the boss would be dead easy.



It casts Ice 3 frequently so I put on Wall Rings to neuter that part.



Demon also absorbs Pearl, meaning Fuuko chose poorly. Luckily, they kept dying so a new Rage could be chosen. Eventually I just left them dead because Demon ALSO absorbs Fire and Fuuko ended up being a liability this fight.



Dance doesn't change the background in this fight, I assume because of the special animations for the painting changing form.




This is the worst thing Lady does. Phantasm inflicts Seizure, which slowly drains HP similar to poison. She also has Charm and Shimsham but they weren't really a big factor.



Demon does me a mercy and kills itself with reflected Ice 3. Seriously this fight takes forever with the amount of switching they do, to the point where I'm just sitting there waiting for a chance to actually attack the boss. There was at least one time where Demon appeared, then immediately switched back to Lady before I could do anything!



I don't even get any items!

Eagle eyed readers might notice a surprise there.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cydYsd-pezo
Final Fantasy V - Lenna's Theme

It's fine though, we got a new friend and a new Esper! Starlet has +2 Mag. Pwr and useless spells.

Sakura here replaces Gau and is also a Natural Mage, meaning they can actually get some use out of that Magic stat. Unfortunately, that 20 Mag. Pwr isn't doing them any favors. I'll be able to boost it a bit with some grinding but I'm honestly not sure if I will or not. They're also our only Moogle Charm user.


Things start getting interesting at level 85 but I will almost certainly never bother getting to that point.

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ALL TREASURES
Relic Ring
Tiara
Head Band
Potion
Crystal Helm
Buckler

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

Doma Castle - Since I have no idea what Magitek Armor skills are in this game, I will be taking Zepeli to this place. They are our Terra replacement and so will have all eight available Magitek skills instead of just four.

Phoenix Cave - If you vote for this place, please also VOTE for which THREE characters I should NOT take.

Ancient Castle

Fanatic's Tower is still off limits because I need our Relm replacement to snag the Strago replacement there. I bet you can never guess where we'll find them!

Please ALSO VOTE for the four characters we will bring with us, with any changes that are noted above.








Voting will end on SUNDAY, November 17th, 2019. Unless I feel like ending it earlier. It'll be a surprise!