Part 81: Walker, Texas Lobsterman

This is a half-blind LP! I am going to bring in research about FFV only when it's necessary for me to get over hurdles in this solo run. I'm going to talk about stuff with a lot of assumptions and guesses based solely on observations. This is partly for the challenge, partly in the interest of time, and partly . Feel free to correct me after things come up, as there are a bunch of people ITT that are way more knowledgeable about this game than me. I don't care if I learn stuff by reading people's corrections, so don't worry about that.

Let's go to the Walker, Texas Ranger Lever for another episode!



Walker, Texas Lobsterman

I level grind for one more level to get to 9. Still about 20 ABP until Walker gets to Level 2 Ranger. I'll go for that at the same time I go for level 10 or 11 if things don't go so well with Karlabos.

And, as it turns out, they don't go so well.

code:

Karlabos (Heavy)
HP: 650
Weak to Bolt.
Vulnerable to Stop, Slow.

AI Script:
{Fight,Specialty,Specialty}
{Fight,Tailscrew,Specialty}
{Fight,Tailscrew,Specialty}

I open with !Animals and I get Squirrels that hit for 179. Not too shabby, but I'm going to need 4 like that. Karlabos comes at Walker with his special, Feeler, and paralyzes Walker. He only gets one attack in during the paralysis, another Feeler, and then Walker snaps out of it. I get in another !Animals, a Squirrel, and then Karlabos finally hits Walker with Tail Screw. I underestimate how much HP the thing has and try to kill it instead of healing myself.



With the garbage weapons available to Walker at this point and with no other abilities unlocked, I'm going to have to level grind one or two more levels to see if I can sustain more damage to give myself time, and see if I get anything more useful than !Animals from Ranger's next job level. So, back to the grind.

While I'm level grinding, I run across a couple moments that illustrate how goofy !Animals can be, especially the Bees:



Folks ITT are saying that the Bee's damage is dependent on the opponent's level, which will let it scale nicely, but it does swing wildly, like axe and hammer damage. I've seen it do as few as 30 and as much as 220 damage on the same enemies. 90% of the time, though, it one-hit kills everything, so

Speaking of birds, in the process of leveling up, I notice that the animal friends do seem to be added according to Walker's level. A new animal friend shows up after Walker reaches level 10:







Nightingale is nifty only in that it is a decent amount of healing for free, but I could see this being a problem if it clogs up the !Animal algorithm when all you want is damage out of it. Although it doesn't seem to fire when Walker is at max HP, so maybe the programming doesn't completely nerf !Animal with this. I could see this being annoying in a solo run, though, if it fires when Walker is missing just a few HP. We'll see.

I also take a job level! For my trouble and 45 ABP, I get:



Well, to be fair, this could be an alright active skill to bring to certain classes, in certain very specific circumstances, like with powerful weapons of specific types (that miss a lot normally). But this does me no good, so I decide to take another run at Karlabos, this time with more careful tactics.

I wish I had more to say here. I wish I could go into all sorts of cool options to outmaneuver Kalabos, but I'm stuck with the Ranger for now. I get killed twice by the same unlucky combination of Feeler > Tailscrew > Attack that killed me before. All I need to happen is for Karlabos to use consecutive Tail screws as Walker is coming out of paralysis, or to have him no use it until he's almost dead. Being at level 11 doesn't seem to be having any effect on my !Animal damage, and as someone pointed out a little while back, Bee Swarm is affected by the opponent, not Walker. That makes it scalable and good, I guess, but doesn't help me right now. Both the Squirrels and the Bees are doing 130-180 damage to Karlabos, so I need 4-5 of them to finish the job. !Aim from the back row is doing under 30 damage, so !Animals is still my best (and only) bet. I need luck, and after those two deaths, I get it.

The run that kills Karlabos lasted longer than I and my nerves would have liked:

Walker: !Animals for Bee Swarm. 170 damage.
Karlabos: Feeler for 12 damage + Paralysis.
Walker: (Paralyzed)
Karlabos: Attack for 16 damage.
Walker (Comes out of paralysis, resets ATB)
Karlabos: Tail Screw reduces Walker's HP to 9.
Walker: Potion for +50 HP.
Karlabos: Attack for 15 damage.
Walker: !Animals for Nightingale. +267 HP (HP maxed out).

Remember that issue I said might come up with Nightingale? Well, that happened, and in the middle of the fight with Karlabos three times. If I had any other options, I would have used them, but the damage output of !Animals is so much higher than !Aim that there still is no reason not to use it simply in the event that I beat the RNG on Nightingale and get Bees or Squirrels. If the Nightingale shows up, it's not totally a wasted turn, though, because I get the healing. But 50 HP is effectively the same as 200 HP against Tail screw, so whatever. I keep banging my head against the above cycle, more or less, until I finally get two more Squirrels instead of a Nightingale. At this point, I've somehow managed to avoid that Feeler > Tail Screw > Attack sequence that will kill me no matter what I do for ten of Walker's actions before I've finally hit Karlabos three times for about 170 each time. One more ought to do it, so now when he hits me with Tail Screw, I'm going to go for !Animals instead of using a potion. My thinking is, Bees and Squirrels will kill him, and Nightingale will heal me anyway, so the only thing that will doom Walker is that Mysidian Rabbit. I get Feeler'd up one more time, but he attacks instead of using Tail Screw. Walker is down to 3 HP when I open up with !Animals for hopefully the last time...



(Forgot to get a cap of Karlabos dying, because I'm a champ)



Karlabos:
Deaths: 3
Walker's level: 11

And with that, we're on to the ship graveyard. Walker is still over-leveled so the enemies here don't pose much of a threat. He can't one-shot anyone with !Aim, but I'm almost exclusively using !Animals anyway. Consequently, Nightingale has amble opportunity to show up and heal me for free, so I'm rapidly piling up potions and I never have to heal out of combat.

Onto the Siren:

code:

Siren (Human, Heavy)
HP: 900
MP: 200
Vulnerable to Death, Stone, Poison, Blind, Old, Paralyze, Confuse, Berserk, Stop, Slow.

AI Script:
{Mute,Slow,Haste}
{Cure,Ice,Scan}
{Armor,Sleep,Bolt}
No Interrupt{
     Display Text: Changes to an Undead!
     Unhide Monster: Siren (2nd form)
     }

...

Siren (Undead, Heavy)
HP: 900
Weak to Fire. Absorbs Poison.
Vulnerable to Death, Stone, Blind, Slow.

AI Script:
{Fight,Specialty,Fight}
{Fight,Specialty,Fight}
{Fight,Specialty,Specialty}
Unhide Monster: Siren (1st form)

Pictured is Walker raising his arms in exasperation at my foolishness. I forget where the game railroads you into the encounter, so I get sucked into it at 139/300 HP. I'm planning on spamming !Animals anyway, so a Nightingale will fix it as long as Siren doesn't kill me in one or two attacks. She doesn't, because she's not capable of it given her script. She lays down Haste on herself and Slow on Walker within the first four turns. A steady, even gluttonous diet of Nightingales easily keeps up with her damage output. The first three !Animals uses give me Nightingale, even though I'm topped off for the second two. That is more than a bit disconcerting. Later, she uses Venomous Clasp once to poison Walker, but the Nightingale heals the status along wit the HP, which is a huge bonus to that ability as far as I'm concerned. She also silences Walker about halfway through the battle, but it has no effect on !Animals. The Siren switching between living and undead also has no effect on the damage of the animal friends. The robustness of !Animals may be its best asset at this point: it's free, and it doesn't give any shits what the fuck is going on. Silence? Undead? Back row? It's not particularly strong, but it's reliable, and that's all I need to beat the Siren in one go.

Siren:
Deaths: 0
Walker's level: 12

Let's make our way down to Carwen and pick up a proper Ranger weapon--



FUCK. Well, at least I can upgrade my armor, not that I'm having trouble with damage that isn't Tail Screw. I would love to try something other than !Animals, but I'm still poking things with this gatdam knife, so !Aim is still a novelty at this point.

In North Mountain, the Gaelicat and Cockatrice both fly, so !Animals is going to get a bit of a challenge again. It's still my go-to thing, and I'll finish off the cats with my dagger. Yes, as it turns out, there is more than one way to skin a cat, but those ways are not surprising. I'm dealing about 45 damage with the dagger form the back row, so with Squirrels and Bees doing over 200, it's still a joke. Even more to that point, the animal friends also don't seem to care about the Headstones' heavy armor. !Aim and the fight command are doing 6 damage, but animals still deal 200+.

I take two more levels on the way to and up the mountain, and I pass the halfway point to Walker's next Ranger level. The next level costs 135 ABP so it had better be worth it.

But at the top of the mountain:

code:

Magissa (Human)
HP: 650
MP: 200
Vulnerable to Poison, Blind, Silence, Stop, Slow.

AI Script:
Condition:V00=00 & HP < 300{
     No Interrupt{
          Display Text: Magisa:  Honey, a job for you!
          Unhide Monster: Forza
     No Interrupt{
          Change Target:Single Enemy, Not self
          Regen
          Set V00=01
          }
     }
{Fire,Ice,Bolt}
{Aero,Specialty,Drain}

...

Forza (Human, Heavy)
HP: 850
Vulnerable to Poison, Blind, Old, Sleep, Paralyze, Confuse, Berserk, Silence, Stop, Slow.

AI Script:
{Fight,Specialty,Fight}

I open with !Animals (big surprise there) and hit Magissa for 276 damage. Her Thunder does about 50 to Walker, so that's no threat. I get a couple more Nightingales before I hit her with two more Squirrels. Then she does this:



That is a problem. I need to kill her before she can do that again when she has less HP. I know Drain takes more the more HP the caster can gain, so the closer she gets to death the worse it will be. But then she calls Forza. He hits for about 25, which is a lot compared to most physical attacks Walker has suffered. Still no big deal. Even Tackle never deals more than 70 damage. His biggest threat is to spike me if Drain gets me too low. But that never ends up being a problem, because Squirrels don't care where you are on a battle field. Magissa dies a hideous, squirrely death. Forza tries to slug me, but the Nightingale keeps me hale and he goes down soon enough.

Magissa & Forza
Deaths: 0
Walker's level: 15

Next up: some more stuff and shit. Also, a new job ability!

Walker's current level: 15
Total deaths: 3
Animal Friends: 4