Part 2: Birthserker

Part 1 - Birthserker



I'll be doing the GBA version because I pretty much do all my FF5 playing on the GBA version. Sorry, no Y-Burns this time. Plus I don't have to change many settings since my last LP was a GBA game. Hooray for laziness!

I'm using a hack that makes the sound and graphics significantly closer to the SNES standards. You may notice it in the boss videos.



Here's our hero in his natural habitat, in the middle of nowhere, living off the land. He's already kind of a savage.





Otherwise, I hex-edited the game to do three things, the first of which is to unlock all jobs. Of course, I'll only be using one of these the entire game, the Berserker.



The second is to unlock all abilities, which is what sets this run apart from your average Berserker run. Of course, with two exceptions the action abilities are useless (the two exceptions being White and Time Magic, and I guess Red and technically Black for Toad but screw those), though some of them transfer stats. In particular, !Summon will give our friend the magic power of a Summoner, which won't be relevant until late in the game.

The passive abilities are what will be the crux of this challenge and will help me bypass challenges more easily.



We start with a sword, which Berserkers can't use. We have to use fists until we recruit Lenna and can shank her knife.

Sure I could just use Equip Swords to use it but that's not necessary right now and I'm gonna try regular Berserker for a bit.



Fortunately, our fists are sufficient for goblins.



I asked people for names in IRC, but no one responded. So I went with...



I feel I made the right choice.



No, I definitely made the right choice.





With that, we acquire the unique, one-of-a-kind Knife. It sucks but who cares.



The last hack I did was to make the other characters 0HP at all times so I didn't have to keep killing them over and over. Kinda cheating but it's a convenience thing and this is already gonna be kind of a chore.



So, the most annoying part of the Berserker is how stupid they are. The mobile versions has them attack the front-most enemy every time, which makes a ton of sense and helps battles go by quickly. The other versions, they just attack whoever, which can be frustrating.



According to Sulla's write-up (expect me to bring it up a lot this LP), a solo Berserker can't run away in the SNES version. That changed in the GBA version it seems, since I can run away just fine.

That said, I reset because I'm going to go for a no-run run, at least until I can experiment and decide whether the Brave Blade or Chicken Knife would be more valuable to me. Probably the Chicken Knife, but good to be sure.



More defense. Cool.



We get a pirate.



Before the Wind Shrine, it's helpful to go to Tule first for a few supplies.



One major quality-of-life advantage that the Omniserker has is being able to cure with White Magic outside of battle. For most dungeons I'll be running !White for random encounters since it heals so much more efficiently than regular 50HP Potions.



Also the Dagger is better than the Knife so I take it.



Free Potions are nice.

I didn't bother screencapping any random encounters so they're obviously not worth mentioning.



And so we get to our first boss. For each boss, I'll lay out notable stats and their AI script.



The AI Script and basic stats are obtained from the Algorithms guide, which is incredibly handy for a challenge like this. Each set in brackets means it has a 1/3 chance of doing that attack. So for both the first and second rounds, the Wing Raptor has a 1/3 chance of a physical attack and a 2/3 chance of Breath Wing.





Breath Wing does Max HP/4 damage, so four of those will kill Zerky!. Kind of scary, but Zerky! deals good enough damage to weaken that 250 HP pretty quickly.



Five of those hits are enough to kill Wing Raptor. Even though he's slow, the odds suggest maybe a couple wipes but otherwise things will be fine.

Except then we get to the third line of the AI Script.



The second form has 20 defense and 40% evasion compared to the 0/0 values for the first form.



This slows the damage down. There's also a Reaction prompt to the Fight command (which at this stage of the game is what a regular party must do to damage this boss, and what Zerky! is stuck with doing). Normally you'd just stop issuing commands and you won't get hurt, but Zerky! won't listen to reason and attacks anyway.



It'll display text the first time, then set a variable so that future attacks don't show that text, then Wing Raptor does a special attack. In this case, it's Claw, which always hits and ignores defense. Granted, defense isn't very high at this stage of the game, but it still hurts.

After two rounds, Wing Raptor will go back to its first form and do Breath Wing.



At Level 5, Zerky! can't really handle that. For a normal solo Berserker, the only options are different equipment or more levels to boost HP, and the latter would just help against the counters and physical attacks, not Breath Wing. Plus at this stage there are no equipment options, it's Dagger or bust.



And this is why I'm doing the Omniserker challenge. I don't need levels, I've got a variety of tools to get me through many of these challenges relatively painlessly. We'll start with one of the most useful, Barehanded.



Barehanded gives you a Monk's strength, which is the highest in the game. Granted, since Berserker has the third-highest strength in the game it isn't a major improvement. It also significantly boosts the damage of your fists though, and they're heavily influenced by level. This is very useful in a solo game where you'll have a lot more levels than usual.





Fists are great for a couple reasons. First, you attack twice, which is already a significant damage boost compared to a single dagger swipe. But besides that, you also have a chance to score a critical hit, as Zerky! did here with his first fist. Few weapons can actually deliver critical hits, but fists are one and they can hurt.



Two attacks/four punches was all it took. Wing Raptor didn't even reach its second form before I won. Behold the power of the Omniserker!

For each boss battle, I'll include a video showing the winning run. Not so important for this boss, but maybe it'll be useful for some people at future bosses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsto7gDlr2w

FINAL LEVEL: 5
DEATHS: 2



Anyway, normally I'd be excited about new jobs but I've already got all the jobs.



That's not going to work out too well.

Next time, I hit my first major roadblock: Karl Boss.