Part 2: Episode 3 coverage

So last time we stopped before taking the plunge. Now nothing too much to show until Ultros, but here's a bit of text on what happened in my run.

First, now that you've seen it, yes. Vargas got pasted by the final boss's ultimate attack, the one where he name drops the hack's name and inexplicably summons a large disembodied head into the palm of his hand to laugh at you.


I don't know if the Lete's enemies are immune to death, or if liquidy just got unlucky and never proc'd death when he attacked with Banon.

I didn't have the R-Nuke luck liquidy had, I learned no lores.

Ultros was an interesting fight for multiple reasons.

1 - I finally got R-Nuke to invoke Step Mine, so I proceeded to forget that the fight ends without giving EXP or GP up on the top of the screen, so Lore's seen probably don't count.

2 - While doing this stupid plan, I let Ultros live much longer than anyone else would. In a normal playthrough you'd either be throwing everything at him hoping to kill him before he goes "Y...you SCARE me!", or you'd grind in the loop and destroy him immediately. However if you choose the road less traveled, because its the road to bad ideas, you get this.

R-Nuke proceeded to do stupid things like Empowerer or Raid, which he's immune to, Rasp or Osmose which is pointless, or other things that I didn't want. So normally you'd see his fire counter, and his script where he attacks Terra, Sabin, then Banon, including party-wide tentacles and other attacks. If you let him live long enough, he'll repeat the last few steps of his script, a couple of random actions then the called shot tentacle on Banon until one or the other of them is dead.

3 - Around the same time I realized learning lore wasn't going to happen, I came up with a new idea. It took multiple attempts, multiple save/load states, arbitrary shell casts on random people, turn skipping, and I don't know what else. But, I think it was worth it. Don't mind the silence, I was originally just planning on screenshots but this just needs to be seen in motion. The only way this is possible in the original is if Terra leveled up enough to learn Merton and willingly do a party wipe.

So let's just reload state and Ifrit him to death or whatever I did.

Remember how I thought the game grabbed whatever had an attack value and shoved it in NPC's hands?



I was wrong! I deeply regret that I couldn't see Relm dual wielding meat at the Nemesis's dopey cousin under Racoon City Narshe. Hopefully the Phantom Train is full of Ghosts who ended up there because they thought that was a great idea.

I started with Locke since I had an Enhancer and wanted to get it into someone's hands ASAP.


So let's fight the Heavy Armor.


This is the same guy I fought for the smoke bomb. With only Gendo I didn't have enough oomph to kill him before he attacks with Aqua Rake; he's scripted to do it on his third turn.


Attacking a soldier does automatically steal the uniform.

Let's jump-cut to the sub-basement with the cash, the ribbon,and the thunder blade. I think I was a little too giddy when we recorded and I learned Shannon can equip swords. This is why.


The Enhancer is the second best sword you can buy and comes with a nice boost to magic, as does the Thunder Blade and the White Dress. I regret not having the Mystery Veil on hand to be even more cruel.

Now while liquidy grabbed the Narshe loot and the Figaro Cave chests first time through, I'm (not) opening these chests this time around.



Not worth it, reload state and pretend it never happened, I'll be back later and probably even more disappointed.

Now for the payoff for the Enhancer. Blitzes are magic based. Both liquidy and I finished the cave at level 11. His Shanon did almost 900HP to the Tunnel Armor

This is my Shanon butt naked, so nothing more than raw magic and levels make numbers.


Here's Shanon one-shotting this guy. It cast fire on everyone, then died.

Relm is still rocking her Lady Gaga aesthetic, so we'll just cut straight to the security checkpoint for Chichi.


Replacing the normal undead enemies we've got these tanky plants. It takes 5 Ifrits between Banon and Viral to take them down. Physical attacks don't fare much better.


Not sure if its just confirmation bias, or if the game likes cute numbers. A lot of formations seemed to drop 666GP, wouldn't be surprised if there were some 69s that I missed.


Here's the next formation. The hoist mechs do an attack called Octo, but it missed and I don't know what it does. Normally I'd try and see it again but the scorpion took all of my attention with this.


Now this I gotta see. Seems it was scripted to just do that on its second or third turn. It didn't try it again, so I have to screw up the path again.


That was a disappointment. One of these enemies drops a Magicite item. Both fights with this formation did. Another thing about the game is that it seems that it boosts the drop rates, probably to better show off the zaniness that goes on behind the scenes. Hopefully Steal's success and/or rare steal rate is just as skewed.


I forgot about the passive sprint and overshot the part where we double back near the door and got into another fight. I keep it in because it revealed a mistake that I was very glad to make.


That shouldn't be there.


What? Hato only showed those off with... Ultros.

Shit, my basis of the idea that Banon and Ultros dying simultaneously screwing things up was based on the fact that the fight doesn't end with the text boxes on the top of the screen doling out EXP, GP, or other info, so I assumed it meant Lores were off the menu too. And if they wouldn't pop up, then maybe "Banon Fell" would fall off too. So I was right for the wrong reasons.

Wish I loaded the savestate where he taught me Grand Train. Oh well, at least he didn't blind Chichi. Hato and Chichi will be back together soon and have a lot of troopers things to R-Nuke.