Part 122: Crystal

Rock the Omni-Blue Mage - Part 11: Crystal

When we last saw Rock...



...he completed his sabotage mission and jumped off a tower. Also, he snagged a cool submarine to find Sage Ghido.

But first, a detour!



With the sub it's possible to get to this out of the way area in the northwest corner of the world map.

There's not much here if you're a Blue Mage, but it's got a couple of things that don't get shown or seen often. For example, in that round forest on the right,



one can find a chocobo. However, as Rock points out, she's female and as such aren't suited for being ridden. Why? Rock's a Blue Mage, not a Beastmaster. Ask someone else.



In the surrounding forests, it's possible to find Catoblepas. It's a fairly nasty miniboss, as it counters everything with an Evil Eye that inflicts petrify.

The easy way to fight it is to go in with a Ribbon. The lazy way is to go in with Bone Mail and wait for it to Drain itself to death.



Winning yields the Catoblepas summon, which casts Evil Eye. Go figure.



Back on track at the Sage's Grotto, you'll find all sorts of nasties here that allow you to catch up on !Blue spells. Metamorphs in particular can be convenient.



One of their transformations is the Elf Toad, and since he's by itself, will use Pond's Chorus fairly regularly.



Further in the cave is a turtle. But not just any turtle.



Rock has Learned many things in his adventure, but this takes the cake.



The turtle is also nice enough to gift him the Plot Stick of Progress and points him to the Forest of Moore.



Onwards!



The place is swarming with living jelly...flames? And Mini Mages, who happen to know the next !Blue spell.




Lilliputian Lyric causes Mini, which cuts physical power and defense, but still allows the use of abilities. Unlike Final Fantasy IV, getting hit with this move again doesn't cure Mini.



Like FFIV, it does leave you with a miniaturized character sprite.



Wandering in far enough triggers a cutscene in which Exdeath decides to burn down EVERYTHING.



Before Rock runs for cover, he snags the nearby Aegis Shield, which in addition to blocking physical attacks can also block spells. Obviously it gets equipped as part of the OP set he's already, er, rocking.



Once everything cools down (smile:, the path clears so Rock can move on to the next boss fight.



It's also where the next !Blue spell can be learned. Unfortunately, it's one of the handful of !Blue spells affected by Reflect, meaning the Reflect Ring gets swapped out for now.

!Lance also gets dropped in favor of !White for several reasons.



The first being that the boss fight is with not one but four targets.



Going clockwise from the top, the crystals are Fire, Water, Earth and Wind elemental. Naturally they absorb their respective elements, and they also have a 20% Magic Evade and are immune to Ice, Lightning and Poison (read: rod breaks are useless).



I'm not quite sure if these guys being bosses affects whether !Scan or !Check report correctly, but using Libra is definitely helpful. See, as soon as one of these things drops below 3000HP, they start using an attack based on their respective element.

Additionally, !White also allows for Rock to bolster his defense against the constant (double digit) chips they deal out as well as help reduce their spells (with one main exception) to a manageable mid-200 range.



Vampire is good for healing as always, but it's not 100% reliable for this fight. Their magic evade means that it's possible for it to fail at a crucial moment, turning the fight into a game of chicken.

White Wind is good for healing, but the main source of damage for this fight is going to be 1000 Needles. Goblin Punch is hitting for just above 360 damage, and even with the Golden Hairpin, using White Wind is going to cause Rock to run out of gas halfway through.




The crystals themselves aren't too hard. The Water and Earth crystals go down without too much issue, and Shell helps out against their desperation spells.
However, constant 1000 Needles use starts taking its toll on Rocks MP, so it's time to break out the Elixir and -



Wait, SHIT. Using an Elixir with Bone Mail on completely recovers MP but sets HP to critical. Rock got lucky in that the Aegis Shield blocked 2 consecutive attacks, but a 3rd came right before Vampire fired off.
I'd like to say that this was more of a "risky strat" but in all honesty I had forgotten about not being able to use healing items after a 2 week hiatus.



Round 2. When the Wind Crystal gets low on HP it starts using Aeroga, which is the final spell in the Aero series. It hits fairly hard, dealing damage in the 400 range with Shell up.

It's still very well manageable, though.



With the last crystal being Fire, Rock puts up a Reflect lest he answer the question of what happens when you put a Bone Mail inside another Bone Mail.

Except the main problem here is that the reflected Firagas heal the crystal for ~1500, meaning Rock is badly outpaced in terms of damage and eventually falls to a non-reflected Firaga.



Round 3. Due to their evade and level difference, Magic Hammer doesn't seem to affect them at all, meaning that it's not viable to wipe out the Fire crystal's MP.



So the new and improved plan is to get target the Fire crystal first and get it down to as close as possible to 3000. Then cast Reflect and rush it down until it's gone.

The only hitch in the plan is getting the RNG to favor having the other crystals getting hit by Firaga and not the Fire one. Roll them bones, Rock.



Again, Vampire is still good for healing, it's just that it's not 100%. It's better to heal sooner than later to avoid nail-biters like these.



Eventually it's just the Wind crystal left. It can bring the hurt with constant Aerogas, so Rock has less time to get a successful Vampire than with the other crystals.



So instead of possibly getting killed before a Vampire actually lands, Rock can use an auto-hitting Curaga and - DAMMIT. I sincerely kept forgetting about the Bone Mail being equipped





The new, new and improved plan is to prioritize the Fire crystal, then Wind, then whichever of the last two. The Fire crystal is really the only tricky part of the fight, as the RNG can have it heal up right as the Reflect goes down so it can blast Rock, and it's possible that the other crystals can be triggered into casting spells if enough Firagas are reflected onto one.

There's several things that would make the fight easier, (Death Sickle, Eye Drops for !Mixing, Fire Ring, etc) but most of them were either, in no particular order, sold off to get better spells and gear, way too expensive or just plain not needed. Remember, the power of Leaning easily got Rock this far, and !Blue continues to kick ass even when the user is Silenced AND Blind.



tl;dr The battle is tricky because of inherent and self-imposed conditions.
In either case, Rock prevails with a powerful new !Blue spell.

BOSS DEATHS: 10 An excerpt from my notes: Crystals: 9 YOU FORGOT SHELL YOU DUMBASS: 1
TOTAL BOSS DEATHS: 15
ENDING LEVEL: 39

Next Time: The meat castle part of "hickory smoked meat castle."