Part 193: Living Off the Land Part 3: Work Smarter Not Harder

Now that I've got the dragon, a bit of item collecting and clean-up.



First off, Castle Tycoon. Blah blah blah plot.... Let's skip ahead to-



Boom! First Hi-Potion! Man, if you thought I was stingy with regular potions...



All sort of stuff that I'm gonna be afraid to use until I'm forced to.

Total haul from the castle proper: 1 hi-potion, 1 cottage, 2 ethers, 2 phoenix downs, 2 elixir, 1 maiden's kiss, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers- er, I mean...



Okay, I think I'd prefer the drugs. I can't use any of the weapons here.



The Healing Staff sounds like a godsend right now, but, uh, guess who's the only class who can use it right now? White Mage. Admittedly, it may not be that bad an idea to have a white wage who's only there to use the Healing Staff, but... it's not a great idea either.





Oh and I got Goblin Punch already. With this I can have everyone in the back, drastically cutting down on the amount of healing during dungeon crawling. Doesn't really help for magic damage, obviously.



And I forgot that you can get Aero in the Wind Shrine, so I get that, too. Why not?



Speaking of the Wind Shrine, I've got access to free healing again!



All right, brief detour over. Let's do plot shit.





Well, that's everything I can do in town. To the castle.



I make an attempt at Shiva. No point for guessing how it ends.



Partway through a second attempt, I decide I'll just steal a sword and skedaddle. It's not grinding and you can't prove otherwise. (Plus I really need that sword.)



But along the way I get this, meaning I can get the Elven Mantle without too much difficulty. (Nor do I need to abuse the quicksave exploit.)



Easy-peasy.



Onto Walse Tower. It turns out I really didn't need to steal the Mythril Swords from the castle, since Ice Soldiers are here, too. Oh well. I get three much needed Mythril Swords, and a Mythril Knife from a Wyvern.





In addition to the weapons I can steal, there's some much, much appreciated armor pick-ups. The Silk Robe gives +4 to defense and plus six to magic defense. Keep in mind, most of my party are still using the Leather stuff. That's a big deal. The Silver Armlet is normally not great, since it's heavy and it doesn't do anything special, but +2 defense and +3 magic defense is a godsend for this party.

For items, I get another Maiden's Kiss and Ether.



Speaking of Maiden's Kiss, I suddenly realize partway up the tower that I can get Pond's Chorus from these enemies. It takes a while for it to hit one of the characters that can learn it, though. However, this wasn't the best place to try to pick up this spell; I should have just done this in Walse Castle so I could have easily run out and then dashed over to the Wind Shrine to cure toad. Here, I'm forced to use an item, or backtrack a rare long way, likely running the whole time. I end up using a tent, fuck it. I'm starting to run a little bit low on them...


Garula

But I got this spell for a reason.



Garula can be toaded. If I had access to silence, I could keep him in this form forever, but I can't. That's fine though; Garula isn't going to have much of a chance to do anything to me since he's going to spend the whole fight un-toading himself. Actually, in the battle that I'm showing in the screenshots here (which isn't the one in the video; I actually forgot to record a video at the time) Garula's toad kept failing. I didn't know it could do that. So, yeah, this is a joke.



Sweet.



But whatever let's talk about them sexy new jobs.

Sadly, three out of five of them just aren't usable for this run. Time Mage might be worth using at the very end of the game for Meteor alone. I might also pull out Mystic Knight at the end for Flare and Holy spellblade. As for Red Mage, it would only be worth it for Doublecast. Buuuuuut it would require staying in a nigh-useless job for most of the game to get the thousand plus AP needed. I'd rather not.

EDIT: There was no mention of Quick here why do you say that?



But here is a magic job I can use! But not at the moment, as level 1 summons are all bought. But I think I can live without Remora.



No.

Anyway, after this I sadly have to give up the dragon and access to the Wind Temple's healing pot. Before then, I make another go at Shiva.



I also realize that I can, in fact, toad the Ice Soldiers. I figure this is the break-through I need. That reduces this fight to a one-on-one with Shiva. All right then!



Problem is that Shiva can one-hit kill with her single target Blizzara. She's basically going to kill off a party member every other turn. My party is going to need to Vampire pretty much every turn to cure the damage done by the full party Blizzara, which two-hit kills the party. Not only can I not beat Shiva in a damage race, I can't keep the living members' HP while resurrecting the dead ones. And even if I could, it wouldn't be worth it in the end.

And then I realize I'm an idiot.


Shiva

Shiva just alternates between rows. That's all she does. If there aren't rows to alternate between, she just does a single-target Blizzara every round. But if they are two people in both rows, she'll always do multi-target damage. I can easily deal with that.



I feel kinda dumb.

I must confess, though, in the actual run, this isn't how I beat this boss.



Instead, I continued with the game, and then came back when I was level 11, and then Goblin Punched her to death. It's a little less elegant, but there you go.

Final Level: 9/9/9/9 (before beating Shiva in the main run)
Deaths: Six