Part 23: GBA Bonus Run Part 5

Other than this evasion gain, the walk across the desert is uninteresting. Next up is retaking Castle Fynn.



I didn't show it, but in the original game Hilda's "camp" outside of Fynn just uses the castle tileset. I figured someone would be curious, and yes, in the remake it's actually a camp.



Welcome back!



This time I will actually put the bow in the correct hand. Leila still can't hit much because of the bow's accuracy, but at least she'll occasionally hit.

Now Captain and Mages can spawn here, too, but didn't.



But Death Flowers do, and guess what they drop? Nice, although I'm coming to the point where I'm needing these items less and less.



But not much to do other than kill Gottos.



Gottos lasted four rounds, and spent each of those rounds trying to hit either Charlie or Mac and failing. Amusingly, Dee's shitty thunder level 2 finished him off. Somehow these guys had an easier time with Gottos than Vivian did, and it wasn't exactly a nail-biting battle for her.

After taking care of that, time to raid the castle.



I could have gotten Toad earlier, but I'd have to farm captains for the tome, and I'd rather not. While spells don't level as fast as weapons do in this version, they do level faster, so it's not too much of a burden for Dee to level it. Now I won't toad everything I see, mostly it's going to be used to make random battles faster. I won't use it on bosses unless it's funny. (Well, especially funny, that is.)

I also give Break to Charlie and Death to Leila, just for funzies. Oh, and this is one of the few times I actually ever use the death spell, and now that I can compare it pretty much directly to toad let me just say; the death spell fucking sucks. Do not use it.



I did actually experiment with the Aura spell in the last run, but honestly I couldn't tell if it was doing anything or not. Apparently it adds +20 to your attack against certain enemy types, which is utterly useless for a party that's using berserk. Even for a character that isn't using berserk Aura is awful.

Now, this chest is trapped with a sorcerer/sergeant combo.



The animation for the toad spell is pretty adorable. Hey, speaking of toad.



Guess what sorcerers can drop. Since Charlie hasn't gained a level in break yet, he tosses it aside and gets toad too.



I would put these on Mac, since stat bonuses stack in this version, but that would drop his evasion from 91% to 67%. Once Mac gets a bit more agility and shield levels I could potentially swing that, though. (And I eventually do!) Yeah, Mac is already close to 99% evasion. Shields are awesome folks.



And finally, this is the last piece of noteworthy armor here. Charlie gets this. While his evasion isn't as good as Mac's, the Main Gauche really has made a different. He's up to 4-76%, and for the most part he's not getting hit.

Again, we can either do the tropical island dungeon or the dungeon under castle Fynn. Honestly, the Fynn dungeon is super easy, so that's first.







What a difference a few magic defense levels make, huh? Thankfully I had two eye drops.



How thoughtful.



Again, appreciated.



There are only two enemies in the entire game that can toad you: Skulls and Wizards. Both of which won't be regular encounters until much later, after we've gotten equipment with status resistances. Admittedly, had I ran into Wizards earlier someone could have gotten hit with toad, and that would have sucked. But honestly that's the only time I can think of toad ever being a problem.





Dee's paltry MP means that whenever the brain land a successful swap on her that it'll always heal her MP. Heh. Still had to heal her HP, though.



You know the game throws a lot of shields at you. I'm still sticking with the golden shield for the poison resistance, although honestly most poison is inflicted by attacks and Mac isn't getting hit so.... probably should switch.



More ogre mages means I can round out Charlie and Dee's spell lists. Dee learned blink, and Charlie got Blizzard later on.



The Power Staff is a nice little upgrade for Cha- wait. Wait a sec. Lemme look this up.

...this was a blood sword, originally. I knew they removed one of the blood swords, but I thought it was the one in Paul's house, not this one. I was wrong! I don't need it for a while anyway, but since it's in Paul's house you can actually permanently miss the blood sword now. (If don't you ask Paul about the whirlwind until after it's gone, he won't let you into his treasure cache. Dick.)



There's also a flame armor and a orichalcum dagger in this dungeon, but I won't be using either. This battle here is the closest thing to a hard battle in this whole dungeon, and I got a preemptive strike on them anyway. I don't know if only Charlie's evasion determines preemptive chances, but certainly higher evasion makes the difference; this party get preemptives way more than Vivian ever did.



All right, this dungeon's done. Now I have to do the tropical island. Yay.



The first floor at least gives me a buncha items. In addition to this ether there's an eye drop and two hi potions. Other than the phoenix down that's the best treasure in the dungeon, sadly.



This, right here, is why I was kind of dreading this dungeon. Not because it's dangerous or hard, it's not, but because these fucking monsters require you to spend MP to beat them. Not only do you need to spend MP to kill these monsters, you have to cast two spells, because both of these enemies have different elemental resistances. At least most of the party now has elemental spells at their disposal, so the MP burden is spread more equally, but it's still a drag. The enemies show up really frequently, too.



It was kind of pointless to go here, since I can't buy anything from these guys, and I just ended up doing out of instinct. I could just warp back a few levels, but I decided to exit entirely and run back to the nearest town.



Which is a bit of an annoyance. Honestly, I probably should have used one of the two cottages I have, since other than Mysidia Cave the other dungeons will be close enough to town or to the airship not to need a cottage. But what if I need it for the Mysidian Cave? _{WHAT IF THERE'S A BOSS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER?}



Back in the dungeon, the treasure continues to be underwhelming. I guess Charlie can take this just for completion's sake. The other scourge scroll and the two(!) blind scrolls can just languish in my inventory. You know I actually sold off five blind scrolls earlier just to reduce the size of my bloated inventory. And I already had three characters with the spell. The game really wants me to have blind.



I end up getting so sick of these slimes/puddings/whatever that I was just running away from a bunch of them.



Yay Phoenix Down.



While this is powerful for an attack item, I almost never use them.

It kind of gave me an idea. If I don't want to spend MP on the slimes or run from them, I do have a ton of hellfires that aren't doing anything.



They don't do much damage, but two of them will usually kill all of the slimes. (And the character's intelligence does matter, by the way.) Hellfires also aren't always destroyed when you use them, so this is a reliable method. Although none of my character can gain intelligence from this, so it's not much better than just running. At least fighting gives a chance for HP, evasion, and/or agility gains.

By the way, the Gaia Drum doesn't work here. They changed how the Gaia Drum works in the remake; it was probably bugged in the original, but honestly I didn't use the drum enough in either version to get a good handle on the differences.



Rather than walk back, I saved a tiny bit of time by warping. Thanks warp!



Has anyone who's played this game gotten any use out of fear? Just wondering.



Anyway, the gang makes it to the boss with a decent amount of MP left.

The big horn enemies only get 4 attacks, and both of my frontliners have over 4 evasion with high percentage, so they can't hit me. Once the boys get berserked, this battle's over.



Or I could just toad the lot. I said I'm not going to use toad for boss battles, but this barely counts.



And we're done. I probably shouldn't have been so resistant to doing this dungeon, but it is so boring. Both of the "mask" dungeons are, to be honest. Next up is the Mysidia Cave, however, which is much less boring.



Once we're at Mysidia, there's really nothing to do but to inn, put the mask on the statue, and leave.



You'd think this party would have problems with the enemies on the way to Mysidia, but not really. Enemies get around four to six attacks, and both Charlie and Mac have over level four evasion at more than 80%, so most enemies get a single hit in at best. Ghosts could probably still fuck me over, but never ran into any.



Oh, who to put this on? If you remember, this piece of equipment is +40 to defense, +10 to agility, and matter resistance. Charlie isn't hurting for the agility boost, but the matter resistance is appealing, so he gets it.





Oh, oh fuck I was not anticipating having to deal with amnesia! Fortunately I have exactly two mallets (or echo screens or whatever) on hand. I guess I could have just let Leila go, but she's decent as a supporting spellcaster. Appropriately Dee got some magic defense from this battle.



Sweet. Goes to Dee, since she could use the agility.



And then we defeat an evil doppelganger through strength of heart and masks or something.



Ton of weapons in this cave. This is where you'd normally first get the power staff, and the flame lance already outclasses it. Charlie's really cycling through weapons, although he's not losing his main gauche. Sadly, the knife is pretty outdated by now. Hm.



Oh, you know one nice thing Malboros drop? Yeah. I wait until getting the osmose tome before Dee gets crazy with magic, but I'm at a point where everyone can be a lot freer with spells.



Another upgrade for Dee! Her old Flame Bow passes to Leila, and now she can actually hit enemies! Sadly, Leila won't be with us for much longer, so gotta appreciate it while I have it.



Thanks for raining on my parade. Those two mallets I used earlier are the only ones you ever find in the game, by the way. There is one enemy that drops mallets: the mantis king. Mantis Kings only show up on certain areas of the world map after the emperornado hits. They're also the only non-boss enemy that drop phoenix downs. But in any case, we're fucked for mallets. While I could have continued, I was boring and teleported out after this battle. I decided not to bother with the death and resurrection rigmarole and just bought a single mallet.



This is the first upgrade we got for axes in quite a while. The last axe Mac could use was the Mythril Axe, with 22 attack. The Ogrekiller has 58. There is an axe between the two, the Demon Axe, but you have to purchase it, it's only 27 attack, and you can most certainly buy the Ogrekiller by the time you get to the Demon Axe. You know, I looked it up, and there are exactly double the amount of swords in the game compared to axes. But then again we already knew that the game heavily skews towards sword users.



I believe this might be the last phoenix down we ever get, depending on what enemy drops I get. The Bell of Silence is still useless.



Hello Ghosts.



My old friends.



Other than paralyzing Leila and getting a single hit in on Charlie, they don't stand up long to a series of Fire spells and a roided up Mac. Since there are two drain scrolls in this dungeon both Charlie and Dee get one. I never get any use out of the Drain spell but I always have my characters learn it. Dunno why.



This, however, will not be used. Maybe for Dennis when he comes back? The thing is both of my casters have Toad, and Toad is just plain better. Mini does use spirit instead of intelligence, but neither of my casters really specialize in white magic, so mini is redundant.



Oh, and now that Charlie's got the same evasion level as Mac, and his evasion percent has been rising quite significantly due to the Main Gauche, he's now at 5-99%. He's actually got better evasion than Mac, first time that's happened in this run, since Mac is wearing both the Giant Gloves and Giant Helm. I really don't think I can over-emphasize how awesome the Main Gauche is.



This series of chests used to all have potions, but they put some nicer consumables in here. The total is one potion, two hi-potions, and an ether. Still not ground-breakingly great, but worth going after.



And we've made it to the end and gotten our plot advancing token. But more importantly...



Yes.



Yes.

Osmose isn't quite as broken as it was in the original, since now you can't drain MP from targets that don't have any, but a surprising number of enemies in this game have MP. Dee is definitely never running out from now on, with the exception of that damn osmose spamming bastard in the jade passage. She's been kind of stagnating in her spellcasting stats, but now she should really be coming into her own.

And I'm calling it here. Next time we get all the fancy status resisting stuff.