Part 97: DS I'm Sick of This Place! part 1
DS Update 39: I'm Sick of This Place! part 1Aaaaaaand we're back! As it says in the title, I'm sick of this fucking dungeon so we're finishing it up!
Er, at least I have the rest of it recorded. It was a bit much to cram in one update, though, so it'll be a two-parter. Let's get going!
Yay! Lunar Subterrane B1. We've seen this before.
Let's just cut out the bullshit, shall we?
I'll see you where we left off last time!
There! We'll just... act like I fought through 4 floors of annoying random encounters again, hmm?
Cecil trades Safe Travel for an actual attack, and we move on.
We emerge in the middle tier of the 5th floor. That's... progress, I guess.
What have I said about chests? Fortunately, my HP and MP are still completely full! I'm sure I'll be fine.
Ooh, this is something we haven't seen before!
This is a-
er, hang on.
Excuse me while I get my ass kicked!
Anyway, where was I?
Oh goddamn it, not again!
That hurts, you son of a bitch!
Good, Kain, good!
As I was saying! This is a Red Dragon. It's the Blue Dragon's bigger, nastier cousin. A big ball of 50,000 HP, an ice weakness,
and a burning hatred for the player and all she stands for!
Yep.
Kain saves the day!
OK, now we need to get our momentum back!
Just-
Oh are you fucking kidding me with this?!
So... would you believe I was starting to think I'm over-levelled?
Welp. That fear has been thoroughly put to rest!
Here's a familiar sight. Hoo boy...
Let's try that again!
Admittedly, I'd be a lot more annoyed if I had fought all the goddamn random battles on the way down here.
As it is, I lose maybe 5 minutes of progress. Woop-de-doo.
And look at the bright side! At least I didn't try to open this chest during my last recording session! I would have had to scrap the whole. Goddamn. Thing!
That... would not have been fun...
Remember, this game hates you!
On that note, let's bring some more firepower to bear on this thing, shall we?
We shall defeat it with the power of Love and Peace!
All right, take two.
Second verse, same as the first, I see.
Ow! Still hurts. But I should be OK as long as it doesn't decide to spam it again.
Like with the Flamehounds, your success or failure here depends on the whims of the fickle RNG. If it gets trigger happy with Thermal Rays, you lose.
Keeping Kain out of range helps, of course, plus he does bonus damage to these things.
Love and Peace, checking in!
That... is not very impressive at all, Cecil! What the hell?
Red dragons resist dark, wind, and holy, and Cecil's still packing the Excalibur. That's why his damage is less than stellar. Savvy players might want to throw the Defender back on him for this fight.
Eh, at least Cecil can weather its physical attacks fairly well. Still! You don't want to eat too many of those without healing!
Case in point. Let's have Rosa go to work, shall we?
Red Dragons are not susceptible to Stop, sadly, but you can always Slow them. (And I recommend you do so!)
What I also recommend doing, which didn't occur to me until later, is to Berserk them. Like with the Flamehounds, Berserk will completely nerf these things' killing power, restricting them to their normal attack.
But I didn't realize it at the time. I was too busy trying not to die.
Easier said than done, let me tell you!
At least no one died this time. Notably, Rosa didn't die. That's vital to my continued existence!
That helps, of course. Good job, Kain! That Wyvern Lance is coming in mighty handy.
To be on the safe side, I have Cecil heal Rosa.
Getting her knocked out would be catastrophic.
Especially when she's charging up one of these puppies!
Have I mentioned how much I fucking love Dualcast and Omnicasting?
Now we're in much better shape.
Typical.
Huh. Not as bad as last time. The RNG must have rolled low this time. Or he rolled high before.
I think Thermal Rays is a magic attack. That would make sense, at least. Therefore, Shell should mitigate the damage!
Oh. Guess I'll get a chance to see, won't I?
Verdict... maybe? I don't know how much Shell and Protect reduce damage. It's not by half, for sure. Those numbers still appear to be within the normal variance, though.
Oh damn it, Kain! This is not the time for you to be whiffing your attacks!
Oohoo. That was way too close.
Not helping, Cecil!
Now, do your job and revive your girlfriend so we can-
Oh for the love of sweet jiggling cherry-flavored fuck!
I hate this dungeon I hate this dungeon I HATE THIS DUNGEON!
How about you shove it up this thing's ass next, Kain?
Well, let's try to salvage this...
It's a start! Now as long as he doesn't-
Never mind!
See, I would be really pissed right now, except...
Phoenix, baby! I told you that Augment would save my ass. Many times.
Now, let's get Kain back on his feet and kill this stupid dragon!
Still don't know if it helps, but it can't hurt.
Yeesh. Rosa, save us!
Yes, that'll do nicely.
And because why not?
There's no kill like overkill, as I always say!
That's the first time Rydia's been able to act at all this battle, but she makes it count! Bahamut is pretty much the best thing.
This too. Again, why not?
Thanks to Counter, Cecil can still damage him while buffing the party.
And for some reason I thought this was a worthwhile use of my time? I guess I really wanted to scan one of these things...
You know what?
I don't even care anymore!
Fucks given: zero! You hear me?!
Now here's where it would have been useful to check its elemental resistances.
Yep, in hindsight, I should have cast Berserk on it instead! Oh well, lesson learned.
A one-two punch of Jump and Bahamut and the fucker finally goes down!
We profit, modestly, from the experience.
This is our prize from the chest. Meh. The Protect Ring is better. The Crystal Gloves don't even guard against any status ailments! Pass.
Sadly, Kain can't even equip them, so they're completely useless! Even his ultimate gloves don't hold a candle to the Giant's Gloves. (The Giant's Gloves are really fucking good, is what I'm getting at!)
Now, if you'll excuse me, I am not prepared to go through that bullshit again. I'm making a quick pit stop.
Thanks to the magic of selective screen capping, you guys don't even have to sit through the long walk back! (And thanks to Safe Travel, it doesn't even take me that long!)
But now we're caught back up, so it's time to re-equip Kick and continue on.
Oh, and what have we here? It's a new enemy!
The Ahriman is an upgraded version of the Floating Eye we fought way back in the beginning of the game. They're another recurring monster in the Final Fantasy series. Same color scheme and everything. This iteration is packing 25,000 HP and no particular weaknesses.
Their gimmick is they cast Doom on you. That's about it.
If you beat them quickly, they're no threat whatsoever.
Oh, someone in the thread wanted to know how quickly Flare charges with Fast Talker equipped?
The answer is:
faster than Edge's ATB bar!
Now that's damned impressive!
The damage isn't bad either! Really, you can't go wrong with Flare.
Like I said, Ahrimans are really nothing special. Even the EXP reward is pretty crap.
Now then, time to head through this doorway to the west.
Another fixed map room, with some treasure.
I got jumped by some of these things almost immediately. I can beat these in my sleep right now. Normally I wouldn't even bother capping this fight, however,
I picked up one of these.
The Minerva Bustier is an odd piece of armor. It's female only and built for physical attackers. Yet, the only ladies in the game overwhelmingly favor magic attacks.
I suppose if you were using whips on Rydia, it would be worth it, but I don't.
Anyway, the Minerva Bustier is the Moonmaiden's "rare" drop, (Third slot) at a 5% drop rate. I'll just hang onto it for now. Might as well.
Now then, this chest.
Experience has taught me to assume all chests are trapped.
Considering the last trapped chest contained that fucking Red Dragon, I'm not taking any chances!
Aaaand- what? That's it? No booby trap? Huh. That's odd.
I mean, it's not like it contains crap loot, either! Just look at that! That's a whole ten point boost to Rosa's already sky high Spirit stat! Plus a beefy defensive boost as well! This is a quality piece of armor and Rosa is never taking it off!
Just to demonstrate, Cecil can also equip it, but Rosa benefits from it a lot more, in my opinion.
Just look at those stats! The cap is 99, if you recall. Rosa is a mere 3 points away from maxing out her Spirit!
With that, let's head down this staircase in the middle.
We've made it to the bottom tier of floor 5. We're getting there!
And this chest...
Ah, that's more like it!
It's only guarded by a Dinozombie, though. Don't get too excited.
However,
you can get excited about these damage numbers! That's the power of Love and Peace, ladies and gents.
And now, our prize. Good stat boosts all around, and it halves fire, ice, and lightning! What more could you want from a helmet?
That means Kain finally gets the last piece of Dragon equipment. Now he can fulfill his destiny! Or something...
Now, this cave to the east.
It's another small fixed map room. But this one is Rather Special.
Not this. This isn't special at all.
What happens if we use a Siren in this room, hmm?
These things show up. This is the only place in the game you can find them, in fact.
They're Flan Princesses, in case you forgot from Leave's update. In this version, they have 10,000 HP and no elemental weaknesses. In fact, they absorb every element in the book, except dark and holy. Keep that in mind.
This is their gimmick. Their first action, typically before you can so much as twitch, they do this.
Who's ready to mambo?
We are, apparently.
Except Cecil. His armor makes him immune. Happy days!
Generally, you'll want to come prepared when you fight these things. I'll show you how to do that another time. For now, I just wanted to demonstrate how not to fight them.
Flan Princesses hit pretty hard, and they're quite dodgy.
They're also, wicked, wicked fast. They'll get two actions for every one of Cecil's, or thereabouts.
It's actually damned lucky they got the jump on us. That puts Cecil in the back row, and thus cuts the damage he takes.
Defending cuts it even further. Trust me, we want to keep Cecil alive at all costs!
Which will be difficult with our main healer Berserked,
and our physical attackers doing shit for damage. (They are Flans, after all.)
Assuming you can hit them at all!
After a couple ineffectual misses from the ladies, Cecil takes another one to the chin.
And this time he's actually able to counterattack!
Time to undo some of that damage.
Honestly, I'd have been better off using an Elixir. 1,000 HP just isn't going to cut it!
See what I mean? They've knocked his HP down to critical levels already!
Yep, we're taking a beating here.
And not doing very much to them in return!
Ow! See? These things hurt, and they crit uncomfortably often.
You don't want this to happen.
Once that happens, the Princesses are free to rain the pain on the rest of the party. Kain can take it.
The girls? Not so much! That's over half her HP, in one shot. Make no mistake, these ladies are nasty.
Oh hey, Rydia actually landed a hit!
Rosa too!
Yeah...
For no discernible reason, they do this again.
The music changes too. How lovely...
And down goes Rydia.
Rosa won't be far behind.
Ouch! That's back row damage, keep in mind!
Who will fall first? Edge or Rosa?
There's your answer!
Kain's almost down too! The question is, will he fall first, or Edge?
It's gonna be close!
Oop, there we go!
Time to turn this shit around, bitches!
With Cecil acting as a meatshield once again, and the ladies un-Berserked,
I can go on the offensive!
Oh would you look at that! We killed one already.
As soon as you can, you'll want to Slow them, at least. It'll give you some much-needed breathing room!
And, since the Princesses only use physical attacks, Blink will buy you some time. Not much, but some.
It can only absorb two hits, after all.
Gotta get Kain back on his feet. We need all hands on deck here!
The other thing you'll want to do at the earliest opportunity is drop a powerful Summon on them. Bahamut works beautifully of course, and can nearly one-shot them, but Dragon will take off a huge chunk of damage as well (and for about one-third the MP cost...)
You won't have much time, though, so act fast!
I'm not sure why the Flan Princesses dance to Chocobo-themed music, but they do.
And Cecil's Blink is used up. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted. Hopefully we'll have enough momentum to finish them off!
Cecil takes some precautions against another full party wipe.
But I don't think it'll be necessary. That's two down!
C'mon, Cecil! You can do it. Just a little longer.
There! That's it! We got 'em.
Phew. That was heinous. They don't even drop that much EXP or gil, considering what a pain in the ass it is to fight them. That's only a little more than half the cost of a Siren. Fighting these things is not self sustainable!
As to why you would want to fight them in the first place, I'll go into that another time. For now, I'm sick of this place and I'm sick of Flan Princesses! Let's just heal everyone up and move on.
Hmm? Oh, another new enemy!
Li'l Murderers are the kings of the Goblin family. They have 12,000 HP and a lightning weakness*.
*Kind of. You'll see in a second.
For best results, Slow them.
And Blink your party, if you want to be safe.
They should go down fairly quickly, but they do have one gimmick.
For one thing, they cast Libra.
On themselves...
The reason for this is they really want you to see that lightning "weakness" of theirs.
They are indeed weak to it! However, when you hit them with a lightning attack...
This happens.
Let me repay you with interest!
They counter lightning attacks with Haste.
What happens after that, well...
I've actually never found out!
They die too quickly. That's what happens when Rydia can take off half of their HP with a single Thundaga!
Anyway, to the far east of this floor, there's this staircase.
A staircase to nowhere. There's nothing up here. No treasure, no nothing. The only reason you'd come this way is for map completion points. Bah.
On the way back, Kain brutalized a dragon.
To great effect!
We're almost at level 70! That's significant.
Now we can head down this stairway to the south.
To a brand new floor! Exciting.
Right away, there's treasure to grab.
and on the other side...
Ooh, two more of these? And no booby traps? Pinch me!
Hello, damage cap! How nice to see you again.
Edge is only barely maintaining his... edge... over Kain.
We head down this double staircase.
Hmm. Not bad. These always come in handy, I suppose. I already have plenty of them.
And Rosa joins the "almost level 70" party.
Oh, and as of this floor, our party has some new thought bubbles!
You'll recall in her previous thought bubble, Rydia was wondering why her mother set her Dragon on Cecil and Kain.
Sounds like you're trying harder to convince yourself of this than anyone else, Kain.
Wait, no. I know the answer to this. Because there's no way you could make it back up through 6 floors of hell by yourself. Cecil's the one with Safe Travel and Rosa has Teleport, but you're not so lucky. You'd be dead in 5 seconds.
Rosa knows what's up.
Now, who's ready for a game of "spot the bullshit?"
Can you spot it?
Ponder that while I brutalize another undead dragon.
See? Kain's nipping right at Edge's heels now!
Anyway, bullshit. Can you spot it?
Mmmmhello, bullshit.
Hello, completely invisible path for which you get absolutely no indication is even here.
Seriously. Such bullshit. How would you be expected to find this without a guide? I know I sure as hell didn't!
And there's some seriously good stuff on the other side, too. Bah.
There's a semi-secret passage to the west.
It leads to a totally hidden stairway. Can you see it? (Well, it's right there on the lower screen...)
It leads down here, to a massive chunk of the floor completely cut off from the rest.
There's good loot to be had down here!
To the east, there's a teleporter.
Which leads to this narrow path to the west.
And... fuck. Looks like I missed one goddamn pixel of map completion somewhere. It had to happen eventually!
I'll sort it out later. For now, we move onwards!
We arrive at a secret portion of floor 5.
Let me just hop up this big ol' staircase...
and plunder the treasure therein!
Oh, another one of these, huh?
I'll spare you the details.
There was much Darkness and Jumping,
Slowing,
Blinking,
healing,
Hasting,
and general asskicking.
And Kain demonstrating once again that Darkness cannot kill you.
Anyway, it died, and Edge gained a level. The end.
We got another Protect Ring. I wavered a bit on who to give it to. My first thought was Kain, but he doesn't really need the defense much. He spends most of his time in the air, so I'd rather him do as much damage as possible.
Rosa... well... she'd take a small hit to her Spirit (which would still be in the mid 90's thanks to her White Robe) and she'd get a pretty nice defensive boost. I decide to take the hit to her Spirt and put it on her.
Moving on, up another long staircase,
we complete B5!
Obtained 3 Sirens
Ah, it's like the game is just daring me to try my luck with those Flan Princesses again! Hmph. It'll be sorry!
At the top, we come to another teleporter.
Ooh, we're getting close to something big. I can feel it!
I never turn down a save point!
After I've healed up and saved, I feel ready to take on the world!
Or at least whatever awaits me on this ledge.
A sword? Ooh. I simply must investigate this!
Oh really? Well, bring it on, mysterious voice!
Oh... Touché mysterious voice.
So yeah. Say hello to today's boss. You're looking at a ball of 60,000 HP and pain. A lot of pain. Dark Bahamut isn't weak to any elements, and in fact he resists all of them.
Unlike his buddy Bahamut, the Dark version doesn't mess around with any countdown shit.
Nope.
He comes right out swinging, because fuck the player, that's why!
So here's our plan. Kain is going to Focus a couple times and blast the bastard with his trusty Wyvern Lance.
Edge will Throw pointy objects, as usual. Don't be afraid to break out a couple Fuma Shurikens, if you think you need to!
Just beware: Dark Bahamut has a wide array of counterattacks.
He does Counter: Attack in response to physical attacks, of course, but he'll also do Counter: Flare to magic attacks and Counter: Megaflare to Summons. Yes, that's right. He counters Summons, the asshole.
So, what's a murderess to do?
Well, hopefully you picked up this puppy back there. Equip it now, if you haven't already!
We'll be eating counterattacks, so Cecil sets us up with some Protection.
Meanwhile, Rosa throws up our usual insurance.
She heals everyone up, and we wait for the axe to fall.
Uh huh.
Yeah.
It's pretty painful! Keep the spell-slinging to a minimum!
The buffing party continues.
Here, have some extra insurance against those counterattacks!
And this, too, because I just love abusing Omnicasting and Dualcast!
I don't feel guilty about it, either. Not one bit. You saw what happened at the beginning of the update!
Our setup complete,
it's time to rain the pain!
(Probably should have switched out Excalibur for the Defender, but I forgot.)
The Stardust Rod is ready. Let's see.
Death from above, bitches!
The Stardust Rod will be Rydia's best friend in this fight. It deals massive damage, and it won't incur counterattacks!
Not content to just sit there and whale on us, Dark Bahamut also does this.
You know, just in case you were thinking of casting spells on him.
Yesssss! That is a beautiful, beautiful sight! Good job, Kain!
Because Dark Bahamut is a huge asshole,
he will bounce Flares off himself.
Just to make sure you can't avoid it. Asshole.
And unfortunately, Reflected spells are randomly targeted, so Cecil can't absorb them for you.
Make sure to keep everyone's HP topped off and don't forget to renew Blink when it wears off.
There's Kain with an un-Focused Jump, just for comparison.
Oh I'm sorry. I meant, "There's Kain killing the boss." My mistake!
Massive EXP reward and a quadruple level up! That's what I like to see.
Level 70 ahoy! For Rosa,
Cecil,
and Rydia.
And Kain's getting there. Soon, Kain, soon.
Of course, now we can claim our prize!
Oh hell the fuck yes! Look at that, just look at that! 5 points to strength, a massive 15 points to Spirit, and a whole 30 attack over the Excalibur! Ragnarok is Cecil's ultimate weapon, and for good reason!
Ragnarok is Old Norse for "Fate of the Gods" It refers to the apocalypse or end of the world in Norse mythology. Ragnarok foretells a massive battle which would result in the deaths of most of the major Norse gods, plus a series of natural disasters which would wipe out most of humanity. Heavy stuff!
And with that little mythology lesson, we are done for today! Next time, we'll grab the last of the loot in this place and then... something a little different. See you then!