The Let's Play Archive

Final Fantasy V Challenge Megathread

by Various

Part 112: Wave, Splash

Cheez posted:

The Mega Man run

Already doing it.

Part 2 - Wave, Splash



When we last left Rock, he was sailing for the Torna Canal.
Outside of the upcoming boss fight, there's not much to note. It's just a canal filled with tentacle monsters squids and octopi scripted to only attack female party members.



Technically, you could grind solo here for that reason. Amusingly, using !Gaia here at this level causes Tsunami and wipes out enemy groups in one shot because sea creatures don't resist water.

Anyway, Karlabos.






The plan was for death by irony (i.e. sea creature killed by water) since he doesn't resist water and !Gaia deals more damage (around 130-ish) than what !Blue spells Rock has at this point.
Just one problem: Rock isn't fast enough to fire off an attack in between [Feeler]s. Nor does he have that one big nuke that Oracle has.
See, the main reason why [Feeler] is the bane of every solo run is not only because it causes paralysis, but it cancels your current action, resets your ATB Gauge and requires a hit or time for it to wear off.

Now normally, the main thing you'd do for soloing Karlabos as a Blue Mage would be to go back row, grab a shield and be level 5 to increase Goblin Punch's power. Rock does not have such a luxury at level 7.



The best way to proceed is to become the Blue Blur.



Dammit.



Tail Screw setting Rock to single digits would normally be an issue for most jobs.



Rock does not have most jobs.



There's not to much to the actual fight itself outside of trying to change the RNG enough for a favorable AI pattern of [Feeler], [Tail Screw], attack, repeat, as well as getting lucky with shields.

ENDING LEVEL: 7
BOSS DEATHS: 3

Off to the Shipwreck!



It's not a fun place, even for our super omni-Blue Mage, Rock, man.



All of the enemies here are undead, which means that Rock's main source of healing is now a liability.
On top of that, he's already feeling the sting of having a lower-than-average Strength. Aero doesn't do a whole lot when groupcasted, and Rock is trying to conserve precious MP in this area, so repeated single target castings aren't totally viable.



See those blue blobs? Don't use Vampire on them unless you want to take heavy damage and suffer another DEATH: 2 from a follow up attack. even though they are living slugs.
Rock starts busting out his !White magic books to keep himself alive with limited potions.







Mindflushers are a pain in the ass. They use [Lick] which is relatively weak attack that inflicts HP Drain. Part of the reason Rock is using !White is because he can fire off a casting of Cure before dying from a follow-up attack after rapidly falling to single digits.
Of course, if you're not paying attention to fights at all when fast forwarding it will cause a DEATH: 3 and another DEATH: 4 if you ignore your HP and forgot to stop for healing



Did you guys know there's a pit here? Rock does.



C'mon, not in front of the princess!



In either case, we finally hit the save point. Rock is now level 10, which is significant due to Goblin Punch.

In my last post, I mentioned that Goblin Punch does pitiful damage if the levels don't match.

ultrafilter posted:

The damage calculation for Goblin Punch is the same as for attacking, except that it ignores row and scripts like the one that makes the Excalipoor deal 1 damage, or the one that makes the Brave Blade less powerful as you run. And because it's a spell rather than a physical attack, it's not affected by Evade, and it doesn't cancel status effects like Sleep or Confuse. It's a seriously underrated ability.

Schwartzcough posted:

Yeah, and it's totally free. You get that spell, you put your Blue Mage in the back row, and if you ever feel like attacking you just use Goblin Punch. There's hardly ever a reason to use the attack command again (and consequently, hardly ever a reason to be in the front row).

code:
(2:00:31 AM) Kyrosiris: it's the same as a normal attack
(2:00:41 AM) Kyrosiris: but it's auto-hit and ignores rows
I now retract my statement. That said, even at the same attack power as Fight, it still takes Rock two hits to kill most enemies in the Shipwreck. The main saving grace is that it is usable from back row, which Rock uses to full advantage to stay alive.

But since he's now level 10...



Goblin Punch does 8x damage on enemies of the same level. This means Skeletons and Calcruthls now die in one shot.



Shit.

Not that it matters too much. Rock is near the end of plundering sunken treasure ships and, outside of getting an Elixir from an Undead Husk, moves on to Siren.





That's pretty much Siren's normal form in a nutshell. Debuff, Level 1 !Black, and have Rock undo all that with one Vampire.



Oh yeah, she casts Silence on him. Blue Magic is unaffected by silence.



And just for shits and giggles she throws sleeps on top of it, because why the hell not? She also casts Libra which does effectively nothing for this fight.



With the undead form, we have to switch things up a bit. Siren inflicts poison to complete the status effect bingo, and Rock can no longer use Vampire without harming himself.




Did I mention that Silence wears off fairly fast? Outside of using Cure, you could try Aero as an alternative, but Goblin Punch won't get a bonus here as Siren is level 2.



Not much else to it outside of that. Cure isn't even used for self-healing this fight, as Rock is solid enough to take hits and just has to wait her undead form to make two attacks before switching over to her Vampire-able form.

She also drops new gear!



Which Rock can't wear. Oh well.

ENDING LEVEL: 11
BOSS DEATHS: 0
TOTAL BOSS DEATHS: 3

Next Time: This Is not the [Rush] you're looking for.