Part 37: Part Thirty-Seven: Bards and Bullshit
Part Thirty-Seven: Bards and Bullshit
Well, now that we've seen Doga, we know where we need to head to get the MacGuffin to get a new ship.
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Here's the Nautilus's theme, by the way. I didn't include it before because it wasn't technically a submarine.
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There are sky stingrays in Final Fantasy III. Why not?
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Enemies in the air can be pretty annoying. This is a fairly heavy hit.
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Anyway, this is our destination.
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"Cape Twin Horn" is just the south end of the Saronian continent. You, uh, would know this because
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But first, I head to Duster. You see, I need something.
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I need...11,000 gil.
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Okay, let's try again.
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I need harps.
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Here's my angle on this one: I'm turning Jecht into a Bard.
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Fun fact: Bards can equip things that aren't harps.
Also a fun fact: it's stupid to give Bards things that aren't harps.
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Harps have decent Attack, I suppose, but that's not why you need them.
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While I'm here, I also grab Jecht a new set of duds.
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Let's rock 'n' roll.
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Here is the Nautilus diving. I bet you're all falling over yourselves to see under the sea.
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Under the sea...could be worse. But there are random encounters down here, so it's a good idea to keep your undersea escapades to a minimum.
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Anyway, the Temple of Time.
Let me tell you about the Temple of Time. The Temple of Time is a dirty fucker. The Temple of Time can straight slurp a turd, I hate this fuckin' place. Everyone makes a fuss about a couple of other dungeons in the game, but this was my major sticking point the first time through.
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Here's our first encounter.
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Now, the more astute reader may notice I don't have a White Mage. This is definitely on purpose, and it's double definitely a good idea. I'm a pro.
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Bards Sing. Bards never don't Sing.
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Sing is always the first command to go off in a round, which is nice.
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Requiem is a song that does out-and-out percentage damage to enemies. At job level 1, it's 10%.
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Sephy is going to be the character to pay attention to, damage-wise, in the next few updates.
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Golbez is really starting to lag behind.
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The gil is okay in this place.
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So is the EXP. There are a lot of encounters here, too, so you'll probably gain a level or two.
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Now, allow me to introduce you to the true villain of this plot arc, the Chimera Mage.
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Chimera Mages have 1,540 HP and will fuck your shit up relentlessly. Sometimes Chimera Mages will kill you, and there's nothing you can do about it.
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They have low defence, so they die pretty easily, but they do have a couple tricks. You'll see what I mean.
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Golbez fuckin' loves casting Whirlpool while I'm underwater. Wastes my time more than half the time, I'd say.
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I hate how soft the kids can be in this game. Damage numbers are definitely inflated from the NES version, and so are enemies' HP values, but I think the kids get the same basic HP growth, which makes random encounters a lot worse. This is because of good game design.
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Here's the one other thing Bards do: they switch harps. See, each harp has a unique song when used with Sing. You can switch harps and use Sing in the same turn, so it's just busywork.
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Paeon is a healing song. Again, it puts up a percentage, starting at 10. It's pretty useless by itself, since enemies do a lot more than that, so you still need a White Mage.
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Either way, I managed to deal with those Chimera Mages and run into a new enemy. Take note, there are treasures and shit in this place, I just haven't gotten to any. Like I said, high encounter rate.
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Golbez is fucked.
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I pull it out, though. As fliers, these enemies are weak to wind, which is why Kuja's looking so impressive tonight.
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The rewards are a joke.
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Besides random battles, the Temple of Time's only remarkable feature is the number of locked doors. You might have Magic Keys on you, but I always forget they exist. Just run a Thief.
Note: there's a treasure behind this door, but we'll be back later. I'm just showing stuff off right now.
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Well, this is auspicious.
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Whoops. Eh, he'll mend.
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Wait, no, he's fucked, because Chimera Mages can petrify you with regular attacks. Normally this isn't much of a problem, because you just need to use a Gold Needle and whatever.
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No, see, the real problem with Chimera Mages is that they sling Lightning.
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Yeah, the same shit Garuda rocked the town with. They might be a little weaker, but Lightning is still a killer.
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My only healing is from Sing or Hi-Potions right now.
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Now, I don't mind games reusing unique attacks for regular enemies, theoretically, but to do it in the next dungeon, that's BS.
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Lightning is way beyond what you're equipped to deal with right now.
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Here's me fucking up and casting Haste on Jecht instead of doing something useful.
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You know how this ends.
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So, yes, that was fun, n'est-ce pas? Let's do something else.
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Like check out this little village.
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If it weren't for the wall between the two places, we could just surface on that lake and explore.
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We have to follow this little inlet to get there, see? The submarine in Final Fantasy games is pretty much always a gimmick thing that just lets you get to a few small areas.
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I think that's supposed to be...a seahorse? Drawn by someone who'd never seen a seahorse?
Makes more sense than a sky ray, at least.
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Before I played this part of the game, I didn't mind Whirlpool. Now I fucking hate Whirlpool.
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This is an obstacle that's only possible in this one game. I'm very happy that no other Final Fantasy has had airships be blocked by mountains.
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Here's our destination, Doga's Village.
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In Doga's Village, you can buy spells. There are different "shops" for different levels of magic, from 1 to 7.
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There's also a moogle, since this is technically a town.
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Here's the most notable part, though: you can buy Summon Magic here. This will be useful eventually, but not right now. I don't have the gil or the job for it right now.
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Back to the open skies!
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Remember this island, in the south part of the ocean? I think I remarked on its pointlessness?
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Well.
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There is an optional dungeon here! It's a really good idea to tackle this one before going to the Temple of Time.
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The enemies are weaker, for one.
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But the rewards are also shitting amazing. This is a great cave to gain some levels in.
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Also a great cave to check out, bridge-wise. Some nice bridges here.
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Most enemies in this place are weak to lightning damage.
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I don't know why this happened. Sephy can usually clean shit up.
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Jecht's almost respectable, damage-wise, when he hits a weakness. If he pairs off with Kuja on a target, they can usually deal with it.
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Sephy is something like 3,000 EXP out of sync because of his dumb dying bullshit. What a punk.
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A Black Hole is an instant-death attack item. I don't think I've ever used one.
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Onto the next floor!
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And here's our first treasure!
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It's a pretty solid boost for Sephy.
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To add to that, it lets him move to the back row and still hit for full damage. You can also see the kind of levels I'm bringing into this cave - I haven't grown a lot since I did that pre-Goldor grinding.
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Wow, giant snails!
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Sephy's going to be my main physical dude for a while, starting in this cave.
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Nice!
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This place has a fairly high encounter rate, like the Temple of Time.
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Here are some enemy names. Nothing in this place is really remarkable. Most random encounters in this game aren't.
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Another treasure! Claws continue to be crap, if you were wondering.
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Aegirs manage to take Jecht out because I was complacent. That's interesting, right? That's what you're here to see?
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If I remember right, this is right on par with the best experience values in the game, unless you're running a single character. In fact, if you're trying to get 9,999 HP, this cave might fuck that up for you because you'll level up too much.
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Something around here dropped a Turtle Shell, which casts Protect in battle. Like the Black Hole, it'll probably just collect dust.
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Dual Tomahawk is an axe. If I were using a Warrior, this might be nice.
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At this point, I decided to switch Kuja over to Thunder Spears.
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It doesn't really work out for me.
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Now we're getting close to the good stuff!
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Aw yeah.
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Aw.
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Blah.
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This is good for Kuja.
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Hahaha, a book for a Scholar.
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It's also around now that I remembered Jecht had no armour on.
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When was the last time I used a sword in this game? The Water Temple?
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Here's Whirlpool actually working.
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Enemies are still slinging second-tier Black Magic, but it's becoming a lot less threatening to us now.
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Here's a giant boost for Sephy, it's great, I love it.
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Kuja's also putting some very nice defence together with that Diamond equipment.
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I'm probably not going to use Bards again.
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These are a nice boost for my less physical characters.
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2,700 isn't shit compared to what's coming up.
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Phoenix Downs will never stop being good loot in this game.
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Elixirs are solid, too.
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Now Kuja has a full set. Her Defense is up at 76.
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Sephy gets her old Power Bracers, which raise Strength and Vitality by 2 (Diamond Gloves give +3).
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This area is down an invisible hall. Each of these four chests also has a monster in a box.
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The Triton Hammer has the easiest guard.
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This guy, the Eater.
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Eater only has 2,700 or so HP, and he's not very strong.
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However, he can do this.
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There are some enemies that will split into two copies when they're hit with physicals, up to a maximum of three on-screen (on the NES, this was 8, which is much worse). There is one exception to this, weapon-wise, but magic damage can also be used to avoid division.
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Or you can hit them hard enough to kill them. HP is not restored when they divide, so you could wear dividers down with physicals, if you really wanted to.
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The rewards for dividing enemies are shit. I mean, technically you can farm a lot of them in one battle, but it takes a long damn time and you'd be better off doing something else.
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Next chest!
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Here's Death Claw.
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Scintillating, no?
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These fights are a huge letdown after the rest of this cave.
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Never gonna get used! Let's rock!
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This is the Zombie Dragon. It has a lot of HP (11,000).
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I thought it might be dangerous, so I used Jump.
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I was pretty disappointed by the damage she brought down.
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Also, the fight took long enough and the dragon hits hard enough that I felt casting Curaga was actually necessary.
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It worked pretty well. (PS, you can see that everybody's broken 1,000 HP by this point.)
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This is a straight-up slugfest, but I come out on top.
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According to the walkthrough I reference, this is the "hardest" chest.
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I swear to god, I don't make this LP with my cellphone.
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This is Peryton.
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This is half of Peryton's HP.
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I jumped Kuja, then ended the fight in two rounds.
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The Trident I got from that chest is a nice new spear for Kuja.
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Here are my stats once I finish the walk out of the cave. As you can see, Sephy is really rocking this town. Things are finally coming together for the Thief.