Part 7: Time to Explode Things

Welcome back. We've got a Totally Not a Deathstar to blow up, so chop chop!



Oh right. We're supposed to show him that pass we got at Bofsk, but I didn't get it. Uh... quick, throw a key word at him!



WRONG KEY WORD.


Captain
Rank 5, HP 750, MP 30, Attack Power 60, Attacks 6, Accuracy 80%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 4-50%

We're, uh, not meant to fight this guy right now.



We're really not.



Okay, we need to do something about that. Does Blink help?



Nope! Well, maybe we can just go in, guns blazing and hope to win a damage race?



That is a hell no.



Eh, maybe we're just getting unlucky! Let's just keep trying! We can do this!



I'm not going to show you all my attempts (there was, uh, a lot), but suffice it to say; no, we can't do this.

The Captain can simply do too much damage, and Viv's Cure doesn't come anywhere close to healing her entirely. I can hope it chooses to do the Bow attack more often, or that its attack keep rolling fewer hits, but Vivian just can't do that much damage. As you saw, her fists do around 60 or so, and her magic does about the same. The battle is simply going to last too long and luck simply can't keep me going for that amount of time.

Hm. What to do? Do I go back and get the Pa- ha, no. That's quitter talk. Grind? Eeeh.... I'd really have to grind a long ass time to stand a chance. I decided to walk back to the pitstop town right outside Altea. Mainly I did this to run into a specific monster, but it also gives me a chance to talk about some new enemies.


Big Bird
Rank 3, HP 140, Attack Power 35, Attacks 2, Accuracy 65%, Defense 25, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 2-50%

These are birds that are slightly larger than normal.


Mage
Rank 3, HP 80, MP 30, Attack Power 17, Attacks 1, Accuracy 65%, Defense 9, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 3-60%

And these guys like to cast magic.



Like their ogre brethren, they prefer weak attack spells, but they sometimes break out status spells. Vivian's got decent enough magic defense to resist it most of the time anyway.

Mages can drop some sweet spell tomes, but I'm not interested in what they have. What I need comes from a Wizard Ogre.



Bingo.

Blind is actually a decent spell to learn. Blind is permanent, and the spell is quite accurate. But I won't be learning it at this time. I have another use for the tome.

Anyway, this is what I was after. After I inn, it's right back to the warship.



Oh and I got this at some point. You use it and it casts a weak-ass fire spell on all enemies. Worthless.

All right, time to try again.



We're already starting off on a good note.



If you use a spell tome in combat instead of putting the spell on a character, you can cast one-time multi-targetted level 6 version of the spell. This isn't great, but I didn't want to have to go out and grind this spell up to the point where it'd work. The chance of it actually sticking is a bit spotty, but I've just gotta hope.



And it fucking worked.



This fight just got a lot more manageable. We're not home free, though. We've still got to start the tedious process of knocking off 750 HP about 60 HP at a time, and the Blind doesn't incapacitate the Captain's attack entirely.



Occasionally it can still land a nasty hit, so I had to be sure to keep my HP up at all times. I should have gone into this fight with full MP, now that I look back on it.



But I did it.



Oh this wasn't the drop I was hoping for. Well I think I can live with that.

Now let's WALK THE FUCK OUT AND FUCKING SAVE!



We pop a cottage, and then once more unto the breach.



Unlike every other soldier, once we kill the guy protecting the entrance he's gone for good. What do you know, the game gave us an alternate solution to something. Good job FF2.

(In case you're wondering, no, if you kill any of the other soldiers here they immediately respawn like everywhere else.)



From the base floor, we've got three different areas we can go to. Going down here just leads to a single treasure chest.



You have to go through a secret passage. Just walk through the wall.

The Sleep Sword turns the enemies into pigs. Or it sends them to sleep, whatever. It has the same horribly accuracy as the Ancient Sword but inflicts a temporary status ailment. Lame.



And of course it's trapped. The blue one is the Sergeant we fought as a boss in Semite Falls. It can still do some damage, but we can one-shot 'em now.



Oh this breaks my heart. The mage dropped the Berserk tome, which some of you may recall is on my special restriction list. Berserk raises attack power. I may have mentioned that boss fights tend to have sky high defense; berserk is handy for getting around that. However, it doesn't take too many levels before single-targetted berserk gets damn powerful, enough to demolish bosses in three rounds or four rounds. That's not sporting, now is it?



After grabbing the sword, we go into the door in the top right corner of the base floor.


Stunner
Rank 3, HP 100, Attack Power 17, Attacks 2, Accuracy 65%, Defense 17, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 2-50%

This might stun you but stunners stun you.



Thankfully with only two attacks they only managed to stun Viv once. Obviously stun can be awful for single characters runs, but fortunately for me Stunners aren't that deadly a foe.



I guess I never did mention that bows are the only weapon that lets you attack from the back row. Which is why the designers made them shitty, I guess. The Blind Bow has even less accuracy than other bows, so it's extra not worth it.



Oh I've been waiting for you.



The Thief Glove gives you +10 to agility! Weirdly, it has weight, so in practical terms it's actually a +7 to your speed. Either way, not shabby at all!

...but it does have a downside, one we haven't really seen for this whole LP. You see, the Thief Gloves carry a stiff Intelligence and Soul penalty. Wait a second, you may be asking, how can that be? There's no indication of any penalty anywhere. Ah yes, welcome to another FF2 design oddity: invisible Int/Soul penalties.

You see, all pieces of equipment, with a few exceptions, carry a penalty to intelligence and soul (it effects both equally). The Silver Armor we were wearing carries a -5 penalty. The Thief Gloves carry a magic penalty of -40. Yeah. Light armor, canes, and knives usually carry a very small magic penalty (although it's not zero), while swords, axes, and heavy armor carry a heavy penalty. Because the game makers hate you, the items that carry the worst penalty are shields and bows. One nice thing about going weaponless is that at least fists don't carry a magic penalty. Because a true wizard runs around naked punching things.

I understand why this mechanic is in place, but the fact that the game never tells you that your equipment can negatively impact your spell casting, and in fact none of the documentation will tell you, is really, really shitty. At least the later remakes removed the int/soul penalties from weapons and shields. They apparently didn't remove it from armor, but the only piece of armor you'd want to wear that has substantial int/soul penalties is the Thief Gloves.

All that being said, I'm still wearing them. I mean... +7% to evasion, man.



And just right across the Thief Gloves is the princess and the other jerk. Whaddya know.

In order to get to them, you just walk up to the bars and break through them. I wouldn't expect Vivian to solve a problem any other way.



Once we talk to Cid here, we can no longer walk out of the Warship. (Someone is blocking the way.)



Nor Exit out. We've gotta to see this through to the end.

There's two potions on the right end of this area, and after that it's back to the base floor.


Panther
Rank 3, HP 190, Attack Power 35, Attacks 2, Accuracy 70%, Defense 25, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 3-40%

Panthers are a bit annoying. They're a little too hardy to one-shot right now.



Also they can poison you, the fuckers. And it's real poison, too. (I think I'll call temporary poison "venom" because that's what the remakes do.) Because Heal's only level 2 and Vivian's magic power is in the shitter right now, it wouldn't fucking heal the damn poison. And I forgot to bring a antidote into battle. Damn it. Wasted that all MP and I can't even get any stat increases from the battle...

Yeah, I had to drink up an ether not too long after. I only ended up using one, though, which isn't bad. Since you can't leave the dungeon after a certain point you really should bring at least one ether with you.



Anyway, the path to the engine is on the bottom right corner. It's probably obvious, but yes you do have to rescue Hilda and Cid before you're allowed the destroy the engine. It's always fun to walk all the way down to the engine room and then realize you forgot something. (Surprise of surprises, that didn't happen this time.)



There's a kind of nifty effect where it looks like you can see some soldiers on a lower floor. The effort is appreciated, if nothing else.



On the floor after the one, there's a cache of some pretty great treasures. The first one from the left is a Trident, a nice spear.



Oh and speaking of things that break my heart. The main gauche ("gouche" isn't a word, although urban dictionary will give you a definition) is a game-changingly good weapon. It's a knife that has the same evasion bonus as a low-tier shield. And since it's a knife, it has a low magic penalty like all other knives. It can be given to mages to let them have a source of evasion that doesn't kill their magic abilities. Or, if you prefer, you can dual wield it and make it a shield replacement. In this version, if you dual wield you don't actually attack with the off-hand weapon, but the evasion bonus will work just fine. Dual-wielding is fixed in the remakes, and it's pretty fucking great, so the main gauche is still useful even when shields have no magic penalties. It's worth leveling knives just for this weapon. If this was a less restricted solo run, the main gauche would be end-game equipment.

And I'm gonna sell it for 750 gil.




Gigas
Rank 5, HP 750, Attack Power 100, Attacks 3, Accuracy 80%, Defense 60, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 4-40%

Of course one of these had to be trapped.

The Gigas is probably the closest this dungeon has for a boss. It may seem like the Gigas is worse than the Captain we fought at the beginning, but the Gigas only gets half the number of attacks. It's not easy, but we won't need any special preparation to kill the Gigas.



Although the Gigas does have better defense than the Captain, so attacking is a no go. The best Viv can really do is 100 damage with Fire 4. This'll take awhile.



Since it's only got three attacks, the Gigas usually ends up whiffing, but it pays to be careful just in case.



Still, it's a walk in the park compared to the Captain.



Oh, and the last is a helmet that increases strength by 10. It's heavy armor. Had to have at least one dud.



So this floor kind of weird maze. These soldiers act as blocks, so you have to walk around them. (No you still can't kill them and pass 'em that way. Only that one soldier.) It's pretty easy, honestly.


Eagle
Rank 3, HP 140, Attack Power 35, Attacks 2, Accuracy 65%, Defense 17, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 2-50%

My heart skipped a beat when I saw these guys, but then I realized they were just eagles and not cockatrices. Eagles are chumps.



Oh, and I got this neat little tome from a mage. Aero is actually poison elemental (it's called Scourge in the remakes). Poison counts as a elemental category of its own. Aero, though, is not a status spell; it's an attack spell. It cannot fail to hit. The spell can cause poison, and that can fail. Enemies with a poison weakness are rare, but it's worth it to level this spell anyway.



Past the guard maze is the engine room. Not a moment too soon, since I'm completely out of MP.




I feel like I should know you... are you a 20th century Russian dictator?!
...no?
Well then I'm stumped.

And now exciting escape sequence.



By which I mean it just shows your stationary character teleporting to each floor, like it's a vacation slideshow. At least the game doesn't make you walk out.





In another show of benevolence, Cid apparently stayed behind and then drops you off at Altea. How nice.





After a selling off a ton of fantastic stuff, it's time to quit.




Power +3, Vitality +2, Intelligence +1, Soul +5, Evasion +2, Magic Defense +1, Fire +1, HP +115, MP +55