Part 98: Level 1 run - Chapter 18

Ratchel trained at the forest until she was ready "I am ready" When she found Meltigemini CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: LOOK OUT RETCHEL


3 seconds slower than Mega64.


Say hi to the Desert Palace team. It can murder the boss.

That's about all it can do.


Saving here is extra important, as this part is rather reset-prone.


I get the bloodstones, both for gear and for making the boss a scrub.


Unfortunately, some of these screens are really long.


Which leads to random encounters. Remember how much trouble it was for Kukri and Tinhank at disc 2? These guys are a lot worse.

Grimlocks, for example, are level 30. This gives the party a .4% chance of running. Papito's Stop has an about 16% chance of hitting.


This is not counting the part where they're attacking with an absurd variety of status effects.


It gets annoying, so I decide to mess around with my moves from CH&C.


Heck yeah. The Magic Racket is boosting Bort's holy damage so she gets Real People Numbers out of it.


It doesn't help when trying to run from the other Grimlock, who does to me what I wanted to do to them.


Turns out, walking reduces the encounter rate enough I can hit screen transitions, consistently enough that I get through the dungeon without too many more resets.

And it means Bort's pimp-strutting through the place like she owns it.


That doesn't mean I wipe to every encounter. Sometimes that 16%-ish chance kicks in!


Other times we just get blasted for trying.


Eventually, I get to the second moogle.

Oh jubliation!


The boss at the end is a joke compared to what we had to do to get to this point.





Well, might as well demo Ratchel's new move.


I mean, I went through all that work with Ark to steal the Holy Lance. Gotta be worth something, right?




I've... killed no dragons. Stop does not count as killing.


Carbuncle is the one summon of Bort's worth a damn at level 1, and it's mostly here.


Meanwhile, more super moves. Papito's Flare, for example.


It does a reasonable lump of damage, though lacking an elemental boost like Holy.


Valia Pira tries Reflecting itself. This merely wastes its one turn, and doesn't matter as I'm bouncing spells off of Bort anyway.


Goddamn I love casting Holy. I should play FFT again, isn't it the most accomidating FF game to spamming Holy?


And then Limit Glove wrecks it.


Gitan's return to the Palace has flee, so it's nbd.


So here we are at the Lost Continent. Bort's been kidnapped to unknown ends.


It's the perfect time to fuck around with zombie whales.


Zombie Powder inflicts, unexpectedly, zombie. It doesn't deal damage like the Dracozombie's Zombie Breath did, so it's easy to get the entire party corpse'd.


And then I blow up the whale with super attacks.


After all, zombies don't get EXP.


I try to get the Octagon Rod before my next evil scheme, but a problem occurs.


Turns out, the cutscene with the Bishop involves a full free heal because it forces you to take Papito. The game won't let you eject the only healthy party member and end up with a team of KOed members, I guess.


I didn't notice until it was too late.

Luckily, I saved after getting the party zombified.


Here we are, back at the King Ed Plains. I'm going to do some grinding.


Specifically, killing dragons.


I have taken a dragon's life, and thus Dragon's Crest deals 1 point of damage instead of nothing.


King Ed Plains has the highest DPS (dragons per second) of anywhere in the world, and unlike Worm Hydras and Grand Dragons they're weak and fragile here. With the nearby healing water (which literally only restores HP and MP) and absorbing Thunder with Coral Rings, there's no danger.


Anyway, I eventually wrap up there and get back to progress.


The ~agas are neat but the important thing is elemental absorptions on a weapon. Including Wind. Especially Wind.


After all, there's one forced encounter with Red Dragons down here.


The Red Dragons have 3 attacks. One is Aerial Slash, which is mostly lethal to everyone. Except Papito.


One is Twister, which is assuredly lethal to everyone. Except Papito.


Their third attack is a regular physical named Dive. It has 51 attack. But! Refer to that shot of the Octagon Rod and you'll see Papito has 48 defense. Mantra Band/N-Kai Armlet/Black Robe/Protect Ring.


He'll always survive Dive and has Auto-Potion. Papito is in very little danger.


With that, I can use Stop at my leisure. His other 11 magic stones go towards Half MP to double the number of Stops. Red Dragons are level 36 with 6 magic evasion, so Stop isn't entirely accurate, but Focus can assuage some of that and, hey, no real danger.

This is the last mandatory Stop of the game. Bye, old friend. This challenge wouldn't be possible without you.


Bort doesn't consume MP during this cutscene. Bort actually doesn't have enough MP to cast Terra Homing normally.


Anyway, Meltigemini. A lot of what I've been doing is because he's the first boss who can kill the party with a single move consistently. Viral Smoke is always a wipe, and multi-target Bio is a wipe unless someone has Reflect.


Those and its 24k HP are why I ground up Dragon's Crest.


Dragon's Crest deals damage equal to the number of dragons killed squared. After I killed the Ironite, I had one dead dragon on record and thus the move dealt 1^2 or 1 damage. How many dragons did I kill while there?


100. Which makes Dragon's Crest hit the damage cap.


Gitan attacks with MP Attack and Demon Killer. It deals reasonable damage.


Quark has auto-life from the Rebirth Ring, and they casts it on Ratchel. This way, she and her Dragon's Crest will survive Viral Smoke. She has Auto-Reflect to get around Bio.


Dragon's Crest costs 16 MP, and her level 1 MP is exactly enough for two.


Unlike most attempts at Meltigemini, it doesn't go for its party wipe moves. This is the gentlest Meltigemini I've ever fought.


So I have enough time to pop an ether and launch a third Crest.


It's frankly overkill since I already did over 22,000 damage to it, but I wanted to be safe against a thing with nonelemental party-wide attacks.


With that, the biggest roadblock for a while is over.


Kukri does not have the MP to cast Bahamut. I imagine she's staying with the gang because a level 1 queen would be embarrassing.

We can leave Alexandria in Beatrix's capable level 23 hands.

REGISTER OF RESETS:
One to Tidal Flame Garnet for the hell of it; Unknown number lost to plant spiders spawn numbers; died to Flans without Flee; Untimely crit pushed Sealion to fatally Blizzara; less work to suicide on optional Type A fight than to win or reset; incredible number of resets for phoenix down RNG; and then again; Marcus gained levels; Snared by the Mandragoras leaving Quan's Dwelling; Only one on a pointless phoenix down rng; Antlion did not cooperate; Again, Antlion did not cooperate; Soldiers beaten too hard once; twice; thrice; Gitan lied Cleyrans died; Tinhank and Marcus didn't make it; bonus fourth Soldier beating; Alexandrian Gauntlet toll: Beatrix 3, Beatrix vs Bandersnatch 2, Beatrix vs Bandersnatch 1, Beatrix 3; Knuckleheaded death to Ralvuimago; Actually two of them; dunked by Hilgigars; Stroper sweepstakes; resources depleted by zombies; Stroper sweepstakes 2; ran out of magic tags; Stroper sweepstakes 3; Auto-Potion; Beaten to Bort; zombie-on-zombie violence; more zombie-on-zombie violence; Stroper sweepstakes 4; Stroper sweepstakes 5; Magic Elevator Ride zombies: Gitan striked, Roulette suicide, Roulette suicide 2, Gitan striked 2; Counter and Auto-Potion do not mix; Ramuh and Shiva insisted on sucking; Forgot the Forgotten chocobo tracks; got fucked up on the way; Epitaph; Epitaph; Epitaph; Epitaph grinding is risky; Desert Palace Random Encounters: Annoying, Dangerous, Random, Bullshit, Fuck, Dammit, Why; Bishop removed Zombie.