Part 107: Mozart's #15 Dance Tune

Gotta say, I've certainly improved my opinion of Bards this run- I used to think they'd be useless because the idea was idiotic, but now that I'm actually playing them... (Yes, I know, I was an idiot back then- I should've at least TRIED them.)

Mozart's #15 Dance Tune

Anyway, time to head in to the Island Shrine!


: I feel like this is gonna be tougher than the Pyramid was.
: That wouldn't take much, considering how easy that was.


The gargoyles go down without a chance to do anything (Lenna instakilled one with a Chicken Knife Sword Dance smile:, so in we go!


A hidden path just inside leads to a cache of money.


You can steal Mirage Vests from these guys. It's their rare steal, though, so be prepared to see a lot of Hi-Potions.


I stay in that first room until I convince Krile to steal a couple, so I can put them on ALL my dancers. Conveniently, they aren't much weaker than Black Garb even if you don't factor in their special effect.


Stepping in front of this vent sucks us in...


...which throws us into a room with a couple switches; flipping them changes where the vent sends you, with the exact destination depending on the combination flipped. Hope I can figure this out (I can never remember what goes where with these)...


Just the right switch redirects the vent here, where I add another of these to my stockpile.


Flipping both puts you here, with a box of money. Back I go, since it looks like "left only" is the progress combination.


Sure enough, left is the only one that puts you in a room with a door. As for the box, well... I've kinda gotten used to this, actually...


Huh. Don't recognize this guy at ALL.


He confuses just fine, though.


Meh.


What, already? I mean, I'm only like 5 rooms in!


Moving on, I find this in the top-left corner of the next room, and a false wall in the top-right yields a Crystal Helm.


This is kind of in the middle of the path between the corner chests. It contains a Protect Ring guarded by a Mecha Head. Nothing really noteworthy. Incidentally: Somewhere in this room I accidentally end up stealing a fourth Mirage Vest, so I can equip everyone with them should I ever decide to make Mozart a Dancer again.


Up a floor to grab this POS.


Shortly afterward, I find this and a Dragon Fang. Both boxes have pits in front of them, so you have to approach from the side or behind to get at them.


The next room has another save point. Yes, the room's layout is identical to the previous one- I had to make sure I got a different frame of its animation to prevent it from getting flagged as a duplicate screenshot.


Last room here. I get this on the left, and another Circlet on the right. Sure, I could've waited to get this one for free, but that would mean Mozart having a bad hat for this dungeon.


After taking a moment to save, equip Mass Hide, and be so frustrated at FF5's overzealous auto-equipping that I just set the thing to strip characters when I change abilities (job change I can understand, but switching from Sing to Hide?!), I go into the room in the center of the top floor, which- predictably- holds the tablet we're here for.


Trying to pick it up causes this idiot to appear.
: ...You do realize I'm a guy, right?


Wendigo is, like Sandworm way back when, a whack-a-mole boss. Unlike Sandworm, there's NO INDICATION WHICH ONE IS THE CORRECT TARGET. Also: He is completely immune to most of my shenanigans.


He also has some annoying Blue Magic to play with, so I just wander off and let him play with it on his own.


Then I remember that I have the Chicken Knife now, so I come back and start dancing, hoping to pull something like this off.


Not as tough as I was expecting. Now I just gotta wait for the decoys to melt.

Boss Deaths: 0
Total Boss Deaths: 5
Other Deaths: 2


Yoink.


I only have one reason to care: That tower's burying Cid right now, and I need his help to reach the other two tablets.


: Sounds like someone was just trying to find an excuse to split the party or something... I mean, wouldn't the seal on the entrance be decent security on its own?
: Mozart? The fourth wall's cracking again...
: Oops, sorry.


Off to Fork Tower!


You're required to split into two groups for this dungeon, because the developers wanted to annoy you with one last bit of less-than-full-party-ness. Left is Magic, right is Physical.


I send Mozart and Krile left, which means the sisters get the right.


Left isn't noteworthy until about the fourth floor or so, where I find this. Minor footnote, but it's still a note.


Then nothing again until the seventh floor.


I actually got to the top without even seeing a random encounter.


It's the sisters' turn now. This doesn't go nearly as uneventfully as Mozart's team- I get in a fight before I even get inside!


The treasures are in the same places, though what's there is different: 4F...


...and 7F.


Time for the bosses. I have strategies for both of them- can you guess what I've got in mind?


First off, Minotaur. Since he's the boss of the physical tower, he only uses physical attacks. Fortunately, I have Mirage Vests. Plural.


Guess it's a good thing I sent the Chicken Knife this way. That's a LOT of progress all in one shot.


And done, after a second Chicken Knife Sword Dance (henceforth abbreviated as CKSD).


Silly thing? Minotaur has Holy set as his death counter... but he's got 0 MP.

Boss Deaths: 0
Rest of boss summary delayed until Omniscient killed





Over with Mozart's team, it's time to start the fight with Omniscient.


He counters physical attacks in possibly the most annoying way possible: By RESTARTING THE DAMN FIGHT!


After a few tries, though, my strategy kicks in: Krile's got a Mage Masher.


Of course, Mute wears off almost instantly, only lasting long enough to prevent his Return counter. In hindsight, maybe Hide would've been better...


Screw it, I'll just let him nuke Krile- Mozart's kept Hide on at all times ever since Drakenvale.
: ...God dammit.
: Hey, screw you! If you keep doing that stupid resetting BS then we'll NEVER get anything done! I mean, we don't even KNOW any magic, you asshole!
: Then what're you doing in the tower of magic?
: Simple- you built it ON MY FRIEND'S HOUSE!


That felt almost as tedious as trying to dig out a wall with a spork.


And there go the last dregs of his magic, so I can actually accomplish something now! (I'll admit, I did a save state before this action, just in case it was something other than this, though it fortunately turned out to be unnecessary. I REFUSE to go through that again! ...well, with this guy at least.)


Steal this because sure, why not?


Being able to attack feels pretty cathartic after what he put me through...


Since he's so thoroughly out of MP that he can't even cast Return to troll me, of course his Flare death-counter fails.

Boss Deaths: 0
Total Boss Deaths: 5
Other Deaths: 2
Returns Cast: ...I dunno, I didn't count. Too many, though.
Bosses With Far Too Many MP Exhausted: 4


All that for something that's completely worthless to me anyway...


: Well, at least it's just vanishing instead of exploding...


Our real reward for that? We can actually go back to the airship dock now.


If that didn't sound like a reward, well, it means that our airship's a submarine too now.


After another scene of Cid and Mid multiplying themselves to work faster, it cuts to Krile and Mid having a heart-to-heart. Incidentally, Mid? While it IS partly Cid's fault, A: someone would've done it someday anyway, B: it's more the fault of the people who wouldn't shut the amplifiers off when he told them to, and C: Exdeath did most of the work on that count.


Peace through being very well-armed? I think I've heard of some real-world countries that do that...


: Don't sell yourself short, Professor. Without guys like you, we'd never get to where we're needed.
: Let's just... pretend that mishap with the sand worm never happened, okay?


: Right. Thanks for everything, you two.


Next stop: Istory Falls! (There's something I wanna steal here, too.)


Step 1: Stomp the guards.


Step 2: Get inside.


Bleh. Also applies to the nearby Ether, and an Air Knife a bit higher up. C'mon, I bought those things back in World 2!


Here's my target for mugging: Alchymia. They come with pet frogs which invariably turn out to be something significantly more formidable (Red Dragons, for example), and tend to spend their time working on getting them active (two turns of talking at you, then on their third turn they remove Toad status from them). If you kill their pets first, count on them showing their displeasure with instant death spells. What can I steal that could be worth that kind of trouble?


Alchymias carry Man-Eaters as their rare steal. These are even more powerful than the Assassin's Dagger (I'm about at the point where their higher base power compensates for the Assassin's Dagger getting a slightly higher multiplier), give a boost to all stats, and (as the name implies) get bonus damage (formula: x2 weapon power and ignore defense) when used on Humanoids (including, ironically, the Alchymia I stole it from)! The catch? They're Dancer only.
: I can feel a lot of hatred from this knife...


The game apparently achieves this by internally classifying them as a Ribbon-type weapon, so Equip Ribbons will allow anyone to use them.


Anyway, confusion aside, I steal a second one, then head down the right set of stairs in the second room; I find this bit of uselessness on a nearby platform, and a Rune Blade hidden in the wall near that.


This doesn't bode well. Tonberries are notorious in Final Fantasy for slowly creeping up to you, tanking everything you can throw at them, and then shanking you for absurd amounts of damage.


Huh. I never knew they could be confused... That makes it a lot simpler.


Also: They're classified as humanoids, and the Man-Eater's bonus damage stacks with Sword Dance.
: *doink*
:
: ...Was it really necessary to hit it THAT hard?
: Considering that wasn't the first time we hit it that hard, yes.
: Watch where you point that thing- I don't want to find out what it's like to get hit with THAT.


This switch temporarily shuts off that waterfall over there. There's a Protect Ring in the box behind it.


Well, I haven't been to a town since Fork Tower, so I can at least carry this. Going southwest a couple times at the forks gives me yet another Reflect Ring. Not concerned with those, since I farmed them in the Barrier Tower.


I have found... a SAVE POINT! ...Ahem, excuse me. ...Well, at least I don't have to worry about losing my Man-Eaters to a bad fight.


Found this through a door downstairs from the save point. A Ranger might be interested, but not me. I also get 12,000 Gil in the bottom left of the floor, and find some stairs back up to a previously-inaccessible Enhancer in the top left (watch your step- there's a pit).


At the bottom of aforementioned pit, pulling a nearby switch removes crystals from around this chest. An Aegis Shield requires opening from the front, lest you be skewered by another crystal shooting from the ground beneath you, as does the Fuma Shuriken to the northeast.


Jumping down the pits left by the Titan's Axe switch puts us right next to our objective here. Just gotta go around and head down some stairs...


Fourth? What happened to the third?


: No I won't.


: Considering how I heard that the last guy who tried to control the Void was possessed by it, I think he's more likely to just destroy everything in a fit of madness.


Leviathan makes its entrance by coming out of the waterfall to Tidal Wave the monster to death.
: Well, that was anticlimactic. Saves us the trouble, though.
: Shouldn't you be a little more concerned about the giant sea serpent that may or may not be preparing to attack us?
: Nah, we've got something that'll let us stomp it if we have to.


: Everyone wearing your rings?
: Yes.
: If this works, I'll laugh SO HARD.
: Hysterically, I expect.


: Two words, big guy: Coral Ring.
: ...God dammit.


Sup Leviathan. As implied with the in-character comments for the last two screenshots, I've put Coral Rings on everyone, which utterly trivializes him.


Of course, a first-turn CKSD doesn't hurt, either (me, at least).


Okay, maybe "trivializes" was a bit too strong of a word- Mozart eats this twice. Heal time!


: Drown in the depths, land-dwellers!


: That was kinda tasty, actually. Can I have another?
:
: Coral Ring, remember?
:


I get a sixth Reflect Ring for humiliating Leviathan. Meh, more vendor trash, I guess.
: ...God dammit.
:

Boss Deaths: 0
Total Boss Deaths: 5
Other Deaths: 2


At least Leviathan lives up to its word: As a reward for defeating it, it grants us the right to summon it. Too bad I can't summon anything.


And jumping in this current throws you outside. How that works is beyond me.


Well, that was a productive update, but I don't want it to drag on so I'll put off the rest of the endgame sidequests for a bit.

Next time: Tablets, part 3! (With additional side-questing!)