Part 51: Part Fifty-One: Forbidden Weapons Round-Up
Part Fifty-One: Forbidden Weapons Round-Up
If you'll recall, the whole reason that Doga gave us the key to this place was so that we could pick up some powerful weapons. In this screenshot, you can see one example of a powerful weapon.
A close-up, if you weren't clear on the powerful weapon.
This is the Moonring Blade. I don't know why it's called the Force of Darkness; it has nothing to do with darkness at all.
Here's the thing about the weapons around here: they all have a little greeting for you, and then you have to fight a boss.
In this case, it's Hein's equally outdated cousin, Amon.
He can shift barriers!
He can land a solid crit!
Here's something new for you: I cast Reflect on Sephy and he turned green. Green is the colour of reflecting.
I don't know if I've done it before in the LP, but I'm in zero danger here, so I decided to cast Libra on Amon.
It is, incontrovertibly, still him.
Because it is a useful spell, Libra often doesn't actually tell you how much HP something has. I think it has a hard cap of 9,999 for displaying this, which means that property isn't effective on any boss after Goldor.
I just chose Ifrit at random in the previous round, and look how well that worked out!
Anyway, long story short, I walloped Amon for a while and he died.
Everything guarding one of these forbidden weapons drops a ton of gil.
Of course they're bosses, so shit EXP. Whatever.
Actual thing of note: unlike monsters-in-boxes, you don't get possession of the weapons until you kill the bosses.
It's the most powerful thrown weapon, and it's an attack boost for Sephy, so I give it to him.
Then I move him to the back row.
There is only one weapon on this floor, probably because if there was a second one, the dungeon wouldn't reach its length quota or something.
This is Oceanus. He seems familiar to me, but who can even remember? There are over 200 enemies in this game and they're all boring as shit.
Here's how Sephy's hits look with the Moonring, by the way. 22 hits is pretty lame, he should be better. The Moonring Blade doesn't boost any stats, though, so all its extra Attack is mostly wasted.
The Masamune has made some sort of appearance as a weapon in every Final Fantasy game except XIII, but this is the first time it's a real katana, since this was the first game where katanas were a discrete category.
Anyway, yes, time for a boss.
This is Kunoichi.
Kunoichi has 29,000 HP. In case you were really wondering, Amon had 33,500.
Her only really remarkable feature is hitting three times a round.
Oh, and landing a critical to take out Golbez.
Sephy criticals her right back and ends the fight before I can revive Golbez. It's a shame.
Gil and EXP, whatever. I suppose it's worth noting that the kids are still gaining levels reasonably often right now. If I took their levels up much higher, though, it would almost never happen. Experience required starts rising pretty fast after level 50, and past 60 it's at a point where focussed grinding is pretty much required.
On the other hand, now I have a Masamune! I can't use it, though, since I'm not running a Dark Knight or Ninja. Dark Knight and Dragoon probably would have been a better choice than Thief and Dragoon, to be honest, but it's not a huge issue.
I also move Sephy back to the front because, even if it doesn't actually change how much damage he does, I feel like it does.
This path has the Omnirod, and you don't even have to fight anybody for it!
It's the ultimate weapon for offensive casters, and it boosts Intellect by 10, so that goes right to Golbez.
Just in case you were wondering about regular treasures, they're still here!
Ooh, a big bridge!
And a slightly smaller bridge!
And a second shitty recolour of Hecatonchier. This is Acheron. It casts Quake like its counterparts, but has so little HP that it dies in two rounds, max.
This is kind of a nice view.
On the other hand, actually running all this distance is really boring.
Thanks to the magic of editing, though, you can skip all the tedium and just see the next weapon!
Excalibur, which
It's also not Holy-elemental or anything. It has a +5 to everything stat bonus, which is nice.
To get it, you have to beat up the General.
The General's thing is that he hits hard, so Protect is helpful.
34,000 HP on the General, so this is probably only a third of his HP.
As I said, the General hits hard. He also acts twice in a turn and has access to a few spells (Bio, Drain, and Death), but like every other one of these guards, he's just another boring fight.
He manages to take Sephy out, but that's the only "event" in the fight.
Hooray, I won! He dropped 15,000 gil.
Oh, and the Excalibur, I guess. Being Knight/Red Mage/Freelancer-only REALLY brings this down. The Knight was good in the NES game, but like most everything else, it took a big hit in the remake and it sucks now. Oh well.
I get Sephy back into fighting condition and move on with my life. We're almost done!
In fact, this magic circle would take us to the last area of The Forbidden Land, Eureka. We're not quite ready for that, though.
First, let's grab the Ragnarok (which looks a lot more Excalibur-like than Demonblade-like, in my opinion).
This is the Guardian. It guards.
The Guardian has 33,700 HP and likes to cast Reflect on itself.
I suppose Reflect would be an issue for a Magus, but summons pierce.
Seriously, Guardian is a fucking chump. This one wasn't even a contest, it was a beatdown.
It is a little bit useful to have some gil on hand right now, I'll admit. On that note, if you're going to grind, do it before you mess around at all in the Ancients' Maze or Crystal Tower, just so you'll have some cash on hand going in and so you don't have to go through the Maze twice.
The Ragnarok comes with the same +5 to everything the Excalibur did, but can be equipped by a Dark Knight and paired with the Masamune's +10 Agility to make the Dark Knight move slightly faster than molasses in February. Of course the Dark Knight took an Agility hit in the remake, why do you ask?
Another fun fact: the Excalibur is slightly weaker than the Ragnarok. 3 points is unnoticeable, but it's still there.
And here's the last weapon!
No, no, that's no good. You gotta get excited, text box. The Elder Staff! See?
This one's a little different, with the weapon itself containing its guard. I dunno.
Scylla is our next opponent. 35,000 HP and pretty damn standard, just like every other boss here.
A reasonable attack power.
But Scylla's real power is in casting. It has access to Holy and Flare for offence (and, just to be thorough, Thundaga, which is pretty damn deprecated), as well as Curaja for healing.
Those first two HURT if they get used on you.
Golbez is still the main dude of the world for magic, of course, I just wanted you to know that getting hit with Holy sucks.
Oh, here's Scylla bouncing Thundaga off of Sephy, just to show you how absolutely out-of-date it is in comparison to Mega Flare. It would probably be more powerful from a party member, but still only a little more than half of Bahamut's performance.
Physicals are still the king of the endgame, though.
See ya 'round, Scylla!
And that's how I killed a bunch of bosses to get some weapons I mostly can't use! Wasn't that fun?
It's worth noting that, in the original, defeating Scylla gave you access to the Sage and Ninja jobs, as opposed to them being in the earth crystal set. They were also both "ultimate" jobs, with very high stat growths and access to everything in their respective fields - Ninjas could equip anything and Sages could use all Black, White, and High Summon spells. They were both hit pretty hard in the remake, and now neither is as outstanding. It's a shame, really. You never quite get to the point where you feel all-powerful in this game unless you grind a bunch.
After I give Jecht the Elder Staff (+6 Mind
(it can also cast Cura for free, if you really need it)), I head over to this magic circle.
Teleporting!
This is the last area of the place, and it's kind of the best one.
First, some free Elixirs and Shurikens. The Elixirs are nice for everyone, but the Shurikens are kind of lost on anybody not using a Ninja. They sell for a bunch of gil, at least.
There are also two shopkeepers here, one selling level 8 White and Black Magic, and the other with the three high-level summons. You can get the summons elsewhere, but this is the only place in the game to get level 8 White and Black spells, so be sure to stock up!
I grab the level 8 White Magic, of course (Arise alone is worth the price of admission, it's a spectacular improvement over Rise/Phoenix Downs). Here's Jecht's completed spell list, by the way. The one missing spell is Sight, because I never dropped the gil on it way back at the start of the game. Fuck Sight forever.
There's also a wellspring, just in case you need it (and a matching revive spring on the other side, natch).
What would a dungeon in this game be without a secret passage?
In case you were wondering what the people around here were (I thought they were aliens), they're Sages!
And this one has a shop, where he sells the game's best armour, Apollo Harps (for some reason), and Shurikens! This is the main reason to build up a gil stash before coming this far - if you have a Ninja in your party, grab whatever spells you want and then invest heavily in Shurikens. They're incredibly powerful (200 Attack), but they're also expensive and they can't be duped. You probably won't be able to afford many unless you're already way overlevelled, but you can probably get a few and save them for the final boss.
Here's just a fun fact: there's only one background each for these little top screens, one for magic shops, one for weapons/armour, and one for items, so the kids look kind of removed from the situation at the Space Sage's Secret Shuriken Stop and Shop.
With all that done, I finally use Teleport to get out of there and back to the world map!
Next time: the Crystal Tower!