Part 35: Moment of Zen

Excuse me but that was a scripted victory and I had 1 HP on everyone and we all had regen, lady


Minsc got nothin' on Iz


It's rather the same as last time. Steal until the scripted battle ends. You can grab a Phoenix Down, a Thunder Gloves, and--if you're very lucky--an Icebrand.

(I was very lucky btw)


Then she does her usual exit and 'Iole trances and yeah.


Oh shut up




Basically what happens is they jump into those rainbow balls and fly off into the sky.


This exit strategy obviously wasn't really thought out very well on Alexandria's part


I want you to remember your oath, 'Iole. Remembering it? Good. You just broke it. I hope you're so happy with yourself that you possibly accidentally jump off an airship or something.


Iz does not follow us. He just runs down the trunk or something I guess.




"Odin, come to me!!!
Momma's gettin' herself an un-birthday ho today!"


"Oh I do so hope he's submissive"








"OH HE IS THAT IS A GIMP MASK IF I EVER SAW ONE"








FF9: doing magical WMDs way before FF12, and way better.








"It was SO AWESOME"


"Okay. We'll leave you alone for the REST OF THE GAME. I don't need whiners in my party."






Oh how very Cecil-esque.


"... There's no difference between them and me. We're all just blindly following orders. My heart and my will mean nothing...
Maybe Huihui was right..."


"Yeah, I see a pretty cool door"




"Hahaha! With this, I can finally...
... No. I need one more!
I must get the last jewel!"






"Why?"
"Honestly I don't know but I think after committing genocide against an entire race, the least I can do is kill a human today, that's what you call balance."
"yeah sure just like your diet"
"Did you say something?"








"What? No, you're probably going to lead me to some midget convention or somewhere disgusting like that"




Yeah Stiltzkin has totally been fucking nuked before, that thing on his back isn't a knapsack, but a giant cancerous mutation




"Alright, let's try using the pods."







•••




"... I don't know! But we must do something!"
"Wait, I have an idea."


This is like my favorite mini-event in all of FF9. Better than the play. Better than Chocobo Hot & Cold. Better than ice cream.










see i stole the ice brand legit i wouldn't lie to you guys


These Alexandrian soldiers spawn infinitely. Huihui can one-shot them with the Blood Sword, so we gain a couple of levels.












"Huihui! Is this Alexandria!?"
"What!? I have no time for your silly questions!
I must escape this wretched dungeon of Alexandria and save the princess!"






"We've got 30 minutes before Brahne arrives! Let's go!"


"What are you doing here?"
"It's a long story. I'm gonna go to Evil Forest now and help Blank."
"Good luck! We're gonna find Holly!"




Oh, hey, I know where this is.


Oh yeah that's just great, I don't even wanna think about where that leads.

We have more important things to deal with, though.

Such as these charges:




hell yes big boto


So this is Tantarian, one of FF9's three to four secret bosses, depending on your definition. He is a callback to the Pg. enemies from FF5, and the individual Pg. monsters are depicted on the book's binding. The front is Pg. 512, Pg. 32 is on the spine, and Pg. 128 (I think) is on the back. I might have 512 and 128 mixed up.


He opened with Doom, which missed and I was like "k w/e" and quickly followed up with a spell called Paper Storm and it wrecks your shit. This happened a few times and I died.

OOPS

Let's try that again.


This time, we are SUPER READY

Tantarian plays a little dirty, but for a clever reason. He has obscenely high defense, so you'll be doing damage in the 30-50 range whether you're using normal attacks or magic or whatever, unless it's a set damage spell like Thievery or Dragon's Crest.


Minus Strike is a set damage spell.


The book opens to whichever page your total damage, up to 256 then looping back to 1 for all overflow addition, and if you're lucky (or smart)...


... then this fucker pops out. You have to get between pages 150 and 200--he'll always be there--to make him appear, so 156 is juuuuuuuuust right. Just never heal Huihui's HP and even when Tantarian retreats back into the book, just keep Minus Strike at the ready and you'll get a hit off before he even has a chance to act, forcing him back into this super-weak form.


He takes massive damage from fire magic (or Fire/Fira Sword) in this form, but will go back into his super-defense book if you attack it physically. Huihui's Magic Sword techniques don't count as physical attacks, so you can exploit this to do as much damage as possible before this blue guy goes back into the book.


While his "closed cover" form has such attacks as Doom and Paper Storm and a physical attack that involves smacking you with the book's spine, his only attack in his "open cover" form is to cast Poison on your characters, which is either negligible or more than preventable.




damn straight


Oh also he gives us the Running Shoes, which is really great Add-On armor because not only does it teach Auto-Haste, but it increases your Speed by 2, meaning that you get an extra 2 "bonus points" on level up (out of the 32 needed to get a bonus permanent stat point). Considering that Speed maxes out at 50 and is one of the component factors in the Thievery equation, this is a pretty great bit-by-bit bonus to get at this low level.

Preludio is good people. I dunno if they're actually Italian, or just Japanese people pretending to be Italian, but yeah. Too bad it's nearly impossible to find their stuff, and that they have a very limited discography.


















And now, your promised moment of Zen.