Part 153: Flight 4: Jumping Ship
Omni-Dragoon Flight 4: Jumping ShipWhen we last left off, we suffered 3rd degree burns and inadvertently blew up a tower and a castle.
We check on the Fire Ship to find Cid throwing a pity party for himself. He leaves and we follow him to Karnak.
Before we check in on him, though, we can find a new merchant in the equipment shop. He's normally easily overlooked because he doesn't sell much of anything we need or can use at the moment (the Kunais are the exception, since anyone using Ninja right away will probably want two, or maybe just one if they've also got the Main Gauche.
However, this is hardly a normal run. You see that Mythril Spear? WE WANT IT. Sure, it's weaker than the Main Gauche and also doesn't have the parry effect, but it has a nice bonus.
This is a Jump with the Main Gauche. Nice damage, but...
The Mythril Spear Jump beats it out handily.
For those of you who are confused (which admittedly probably isn't many, most of you probably know this game as well or better than I do), using a spear with Jump will produce double the normal damage. This is why Dragoons like their spears. This is very nice, as before we were pretty much coming out even on offense and defense with Jump, since enemies couldn't hit us half the time, but also leaving us taking twice as long to deal damage. Now a Jump session will deal damage at the same rate as just Fighting while also leaving us invincible for half that time. Not to mention still being in the back row.
One weird thing about spears I'd like to mention is that they cannot be Two-Handed, but they CAN be Dual-Wielded. This confuses the crap out of me. Spears are big long sticks with a bit of pointy metal on the end, and are thus unwieldy as fuck. They are sensibly meant to be used with both hands to begin with, and I can't imagine how incredibly awkward using two at once would be. What the freaking hell, Square.
Anyway, let's look in on Cid now.
THE PITY PARTY BUS IS HAS MOVED TO KARNAK! It will stay there for a time to refuel. On booze and regrets.
Well, we kinda need to pick his brain, but he seems determined to kill it with tequila first. Any ideas?
That'll work. Guess we should hit this library next.
"I also hear that they randomly carry a spear of some kind. ...I'm not quite sure how."
: WANT
So, there's some desert tiles between Karnak and the Library of Ancients. The only enemy in it is the Dhorme Chimera, and they're brutal bastards capable of hitting for up to 400 damage, either through their Critical attack (in the back row!) or with their Aqua Breath Blue Magic. They've also got 1000 HP and some decent defenses, so killing them before they kill you (especially at the usual level range of 14-16 when the usual full team gets here) is a hell of a task.
The problem is that they also have a new spear for me to grab. Problem is it's a steal item. Correction: A RARE steal. On the plus side, they don't have a common steal, so I don't have to worry about constantly nabbing that instead. But it also gives us a roughly 10/255 chance of swiping it, so doing so requires a bit of patience. I suffer a few deaths (and actually kill two of them when they go for only physicals that kept getting blocked my my Gauche, shield, or mantle long enough for me to deplete their HP with !Mug), but eventually I nab one.
Unfortunately, my memory turned out to be a bit spotty. I was thinking that they carried a good spear that you can't get for a good while. This spear? I can buy it after beating the next dungeon.
Level: 22
Deaths: 11
Spear: Not freaking worth the effort
Let's get to that damn library already.
Of course we have to look for him.
Jordan tries his hand at reading, but unfortunately he learned to read from Zerky!.
This asshole bookcase blocks our path. Jordan can't just Jump over it for some reason.
We require the services of Ifrit. He's pretty tough, knocking off over 1/3 of Jordan's HP with Fira.
Jump hits for decent damage, but he's got 3000 HP and can tear through our health much faster than 6 rounds.
He's also got some Magic Defense, so !Lance can't quite keep up with his damage output.
And he can paralyze too! Why the fuck not.
Level: 22
Deaths: 1
I actually get lucky and beat him twice (I forgot to take any screenshots or record a video of the first round, so I have to fight him twice more, with my sole loss coming between the two wins), and he joins my team, where he'll never be used. You know, just like the rest of my team.
We find a skintight rubber suit that's somehow as protective as a set of magical silver armor. Works for me! (We wear it because the extra Agility and lower weight can't hurt.)
Finally, we get one of the biggest walls of teams reliant on physical characters: Byblos. Byblos is a DICK.
So, did you know he absorbs all elements besides Fire and Holy? I sure as hell didn't. It's never come up since I usually just roast him with Fira and Ifrit (unless I'm playing the FJF and get stuck with physical teams). Now the time spent getting that Trident is even MORE wasted.
This is Jump damage. Byblos has about 3600 HP, so we'll need about 10 of these. But remember, Byblos is a DICK.
He can slow you with his Thread spell. You may recall my fight with Siren being much harder than it had to be thanks to Slow. It's several times worse with Byblos.
He can cast Protect to blunt our Jumps. There's a 1/3 chance he'll do this in response to any physical attack (in fact, sometimes he'll do it twice just to rub it in). I eventually start resetting if he does this too early, as it inevitably ends up leading to a very drawn-out loss.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, the double Protects, which were stumping me before since I couldn't find it in his code, might simply have been due to dual-wielding. Each spear hit triggered its own Protect.
Wind Slash is, as always, MaxHP/4 in damage, making it take a large chunk out of Jordan's life. His physical attack would probably deal similar damage if Jordan wasn't in the back row.
Oh, and there's this too. He packs Discord, which halves level. This is very bad...
Because damn near all your damage multipliers rely heavily on level. Now, Byblos has high magic defense to begin with, and Discord only makes it worse.
In fact, magic defense is the greatest bane of !Lance (besides undead, naturally). All those calculations I showed in the previous update assumed that the target has no magic defense at all, which applies to a good bit of normal enemies. But plenty of bosses resist magic, significantly weakening !Lance, already low on power thanks to Jordan's weak Magic. Add in a Discord to drop the Magic multiplier by a point, and it's effectively useless.
Not an uncommon sight for physical classes in this thread.
I went and checked Sulla's solo Dragoon challenge for ideas, but it looks like Sulla had a similar idea to mine, and ended up getting past Byblos by using !Lance to drain all of his MP. Sounds easy on paper, since once Byblos is out of MP he's only got a physical attack against a back row character for damage. Problem is he's got 1000 MP, so working through that 20 MP at a time (16 after a Discord) would still take forever (Sulla took 30 minutes and about 45 !Lances to do it). But Sulla was also apparently a higher level than I was, having over 1000 HP at this point, and I'd prefer not to have to grind, especially not in the library.
In an attempt to kill him quickly enough, I try Dual-Wield instead of !Lance for my sub-ability. This would require me to only land 5 Jumps while hoping he doesn't respond with Protect or...
...Drain. Once he gets to a certain HP amount, he'll have a 2/3 chance of countering any damage with Drain. Scratch that, TWO 2/3 chances to counter with Drain, and a double Drain spell will not only set one back a round or two, it'll also fuck over Jordan's health.
EDIT: See my notes above regarding Protect counters. Seriously, Square, Two-Handed would've really helped for this fight.
I see this screen and drop more resets than I'd like. And while I could simply be patient and wait for my luck to run in just the right way, I've always been a fan of making my own luck.
That and I was starting to get mad. And when I get mad, I get cheap.
: Hey, Byblos! Would you like to know what passive skill I went with this time?
: *snort* Oh, hey, let me guess. Equip Ribbon to block Slow? I can still Discord, Protect, and Drain your ass! Or maybe Shirahadori to block my weakest attack? Or even HP+30% to make my Wind Slash even better? Bwa ha ha!: Actually...
: It was Equip Rods.(I barely missed the amount of damage shown, but it was just under 2000. And that's WITH Jordan's abysmal Magic.)
: 
: 
Level: 22
Deaths: 4
Resets: Dunno, probably at least 20
Dicks roasted: 1
Let us go meet Mid, who turns out to be an ungrateful little shit. At this rate, Byblos won't be the only one burning.
: Well, OK, it was less "rustling" and more "frequent cursing and laughter coming from some guy that sounded like a real dick.
Anyway, Mid lets us shortcut our way back to the main room and tells us we might have more transportation available to us. Fuck yes to that! But wait, first we have to fix Cid, apparently!
Mid fixes that problem by giving him a concussion and making him forget that he fucked up. Works for me!
Now, am I the only one who ever found this whole scene kind of awkward? We don't know what Galuf's deal was in the other world or why Krile's apparently pissed at him for apparently beating himself up over...something, we never do quite learn what. I mean, sure, Galuf gets his memory jogged a bit by seeing a grandchild with supreme faith in their grandparent makes sense and it's kind of touching, but the way it's presented is just so odd. Well, maybe elderly abuse is more common in Japan.
So hey, we got ourselves a new mission! Kill Exdeath! Whoever that is! Whatever, it's killin' and I'm all over that.
This is also an awkward line. What the hell is it supposed to mean? Was this some mistranslation nonsense?
Whatever, we're on a boat, motherfuckers. Join Jordan next time when he promptly loses it like a dumbass.