Final Fantasy V Challenge Megathread Part #24 - Mystic Knight 11

Part 24: Mystic Knight 11 - Break Down

Mystic Knight 10 - Break Down

Let's just jump right in, the final dungeon is hidden over the remnants of Tycoon.

The true power of the void, tracking lines.

The cleft of dimensions is a collection of junk the void gobbled up.

First, at some point it got the desert of shifting sands. No sandworm though. It's DEAD forever

It's a pretty short section, worst case, you have to figure out the right path from 3 options rather than 2.

This thing is susceptible to instant death, so keep the assassins dagger equipped for awhile. Except bosses, attack power isn't important for the time being.

He's here too, and despite my attempts to run to grind the Chicken knife, I killed him anyway.

In the last 1000 years a lot of them forgot to put on pants.

I'd love for you to help me with these 3 loads. The sand should be easy to dig into. Wait, you're gone?

The Bone Mail makes fights with Death Dealers in them almost impossible to lose. If Roulette hits something in the enemy party, great, one less thing to Break Sword. If it hits Mihnwu, free heal.

And elixirs, can't be unhappy about that.

After making several statues in the Ronkin ruins, we come across this familiar place. If I talked to jerks without event flags, one of the ones in Mirage would have said they were sucked into the Rift 1000 years ago. Even though they're out, a bit remains.

These are probably the nastiest enemies in the wooded section. The mushrooms could confuse with a nasty powerful special attack, but the Bone Mail prevents confuse. So it's just buckets of pain while they get broken one by one.

Anyway, here's the first boss of the final dungeon. This is her first and only action. And it missed.

Not going to bother showing her combat script (it's pretty complicated depending on peoples reflect status). She has normal boss immunities and pretty good evasion. But she's vulnerable to silence.

I went with the Assassins Knife again, since I didn't want to deal with a wasted !flee. She's still heavy, so silence wears can wear off.

So death by a thousand cuts.

Final Level - 49
Total Deaths - 0

Not happening. If Mihnwu were going Omni, he'd have a slight, non-zero chance to win with a couple lucky Rapid Fire Thundaga Chicken Knives.

Wow, a semicolon. At least he isn't letting living in a book for a millennium go to waste.

Oh... no? (spoiler, it was actually a good thing we did that)

Fans of Final Fantasy Tactics (and if you're reading an FFV thread, I'm sure you are) will recognize that both Byblos and his recolor here are also in that game as unique monsters.

He does some general dickery and counters with drain like his little brother.

But he's still inflammable, and we've got a weapon that burns twice as hot. (This is after a discord, so this is a cakewalk)

Final Level - 49
Total Deaths - 0

Just as useless as the last one. At this point I decide to wrap up some of the sidequests that I left behind.

The door you enter Rift Mirage from is blocked by a blue plot wall in the actual town.

It's about this time that I realize that as great an item as the Mirage Vest is, it is not so great for Mihnwu. The same trick that reactivates the single image also removes the effects of !Spell Blade. So I probably won't use it much besides the Minotaur fight, but still keep it.

First, let's kill a dragon.

This is the setup

To keep up the offense without sacrificing healing, I go with Drain. Bahamut does maybe 1500 HP of damage when he hits, so this keeps up nicely.

Except he knows Maelstrom. Of course he does. I tried to drain sword back to full, but !Flee triggered.

I did not make the same mistake the second time.

Once down to low health, Bahamut starts rolling out Mega Flares, they're reflectable though.

And he counters damage with Mega Flare. He Counters his own self inflicted attacks.

Final Level - 49
Total Deaths - 1

Being a little wary of an upcoming boss, I wanted to get Float from this jerk. Temptango from the dancing dagger can make the cat cast it. Except every time I used Temptango it just did cat kick.

I also ran into an obscene number of sword dances during this attempt. A horrible waste. I give up since I was pretty sure I didn't need to care.

Let's go somewhere else. I ran from the skull eater because I still haven't maxed out the chicken knife. Sadly I didn't get another one to see what I could do to him as he fails to do anything.

Remember back when you weren't explicitly told you could climb vines? Well you can climb this wall.

We end up in Galuf's basement. If I needed AP I'd be happy, but they're just in the way right now.

You'll spare me a minute? How kind, too bad I can't spare you.

I think he's weak to Thunder if you wanted to play fair. But despite hanging around living statues, he didn't learn that important lesson.

Despite giving us a minute, unlike FFIV's Odin, he isn't above taking some cheap shots.

He had some stones to try and pull that. Now he is stone.

Final Level - 49
Deaths - 0

Too bad I already got him, Bahamut and Leviathan in my pokeball.

A reminder that Break is completely Breaken.

I need a savepoint, and I'm willing to fight for it.

Azure is a shade of blue, magia sounds familiar too... This is irrelevant to Mihnwu.

One of the things that I'm finding challenging at this moment is the balance between offense and defense, or a chance at huge damage or a descent sure thing.

Tealwizard did not need this careful weighing to beat.

Winged Shoes are a wonderful, horrifying thing.

Consider this a learning experience Navyconjurer.

Final Level - 50
Total Deaths - 0

This is the guy I wanted float for.

I don't think I mentioned it yet, but in addition to the magical evasion, the Aegis Shield guards against petrify.

This happened 2 more times.

Didn't need to script lock him with a reflected floating Mihnwu afterall.

Same as Catalinatrickster

Let's not stall any longer, let's see a real challenge.

Halicarnassius Kennedy on paper isn't too challenging, but does enough mildly irritating things that keep you from killing him before he throws out his instant win button. First Party-wide Toad attack.

Apparently damage is only halved when Flare Sword and Toad get together, rather than 0.

Other things he does is switch your row and cast haste. Turns spent healing Toad and resetting rows are turns wasted. His 7th turn is Holy, period. There's no 1/3 shot of him doing something else, it's Holy. With his magic stat it nearly hits the damage limit without bone mail. I try one more

attempt with the same results.

So I let him have his fun. He can toad or switch rows or do middling physical damage all he wants. A couple pokes with Flare Sword to help along the way.