Part 89: Walker, Texas Science Guy

New intro for the OMNI RANGER I'm still playing the game blind except form what I learn from the other LPs in the thread, and from what I look up after the fact online. I played FFV over ten years ago, so I remember some stuff but no important details, and certainly no AI scripts or anything that would help me substantially in a solo run. But now that I'm using other job abilities with the Ranger, I'll pause at the end of each episode to ask the goons to choose how I use those options at the start of the next episode. I'll switch things around to keep things interesting and moving forward in the middle of my posts, but I want to have some reader participation.

Walker, Texas Ranger Lever: ENGAGE



Solo Ranger, Episode Ten:
Walker, Texas Science Guy

Last time, I gave the goons a few options to help Walker deal with Exdeath:

!Mix (Chemist)
!Throw (Ninja)
!Zeninage (Samurai)
!Predict (Oracle)

The goons were again merciful and spared me the (comparatively) underpowered and less versatile !Throw and !Zeninage. I was left with a tie between !Mix and !Predict, so I had to make the choice based on those two.

It's time for SCIENCE



(Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill Walker Walker Walker Walker Walker Walker Walker...)

On this episode of Walker, Texas Science Guy:

Chemistry *bubbling sounds*

That's right, we're going to use !Mix, and against an AI script like Exdeath's, I don't feel ashamed for ripping off Walter's playbook. But before we get into that, let's get a look at Walker's chemistry set:

*Whoosh sound*



Oops, didn't get every ingredient in the shot there. *Tuba sound* Let's see...



There we go. *Gulp. Ahhhh*

Now, with the power of chemistry, Walker can heal wounds, cure diseases, create barriers, or mercilessly destroy our enemies. *Scream sound* We're going to do a bit of the former, but mostly the latter.

~Consider the Following~



(Thanks, Kyrosiris!)

This is the periodic table. No... I know. Just trust me. It is. Just... ok?

Anyway, the periodic table tells us everything that we can make with chemistry. Looking at Exdeath's AI script, we're going to need about in this order:

Life Shield (PD + HW)
Protect Potion (TS + TS)
Hasty-aid (ED + TS)
Goliath Tonic (E + DF)
Dark Sigh (ED + DF)
Dragon Power, let's say three times (HP + DF)
Levisalve, as needed (A + MK)
Succubus Kiss, as needed (TS + MK)
Holy Breath, until Exdeath... death (DF + HW)

That's a lot of Dragon's Fangs and Turtle Shells. My inventory is going to look like this:

HP 7 - 3 = 4
A 24 - 1 = 23
ED 20 - 2 = 18
PD 16 - 1 = 15
HW 26 - ?? = ??
MK 17 - ?? = ??
TS 18 - ?? = ??
DF 22 - ?? = ??
DM 4 - 0 = 4

It looks like I will have plenty of everything. There's a reason I haven't ever sold anything, and it's not just because Walker is a hoarder. I'll be low on Hi Potions when I'm done, but I don't need them to heal because that's for losers who aren't using Bone Mail. Depending on how paranoid I get about float and how many times I have to heal myself with Succubus Kiss, the Maiden's Kisses might be the only thing that runs down. I'm still surprised I don't have a need for the Dark Matters yet. I mean, I could use them here, but I don't think I'll have to. So let's just get this done.

Exdeath opens with Doom once and effectively kills me before I can get anything up. He does that once, then the next time he opens with a physical attack.

That would be the last mistake he'd ever make.





He uses a gravity attack to "cure" float, so...



Then I continue my paranoid drug abuse assault:



(Hasty-aid)

He gets bored of throwing lame magic attacks at me and finally uses hurricane, so I have to go to Succubus Kiss for the first time:



Then, the rampant drug abuse continues:





You DINK. I just doubled all that HP you just wiped out! Time for another smooch:









Oops! Forgot the Dark Sigh:



Now we're set. Walker has "deathproof," "haste," "protect," "shell," "float," and +60 levels. Exdeath has the "blind" and "stupid dink" statuses. Now I can go on offense:





HP = damage, huh? Well, let's fix that:



Now, let's see what we can do:











Repeat that last one a bunch more times and you get the picture.





Yer gatdam right.

Exdeath
Walker Level: 44
Deaths (in this update): 1

That wasn't even close. Once Walker got off the ground with even just a couple of the !Mix buffs, it was basically all over but the crying. I never felt threatened at any point except after that one Hurricane. I didn't even remember to use the Reflect Ring and I didn't go all-out by using Dragon Shield instead of the Protect Potion, but none of that mattered either.

I'm going to step back from !Mix right after this because if I don't Walker's run will just turn into a Chemist run, and we've already seen that. And besides, I have some unfinished business... cuddly animal friend business.



I switch back to !Animals because I haven't used it since Falcon shows up after level 30. If the pattern holds, I should have gotten another animal friend at level 40. I set out to explore the new, combined world and eventually try out !Animals, when this happens:

code:

Antlion
HP: 8100
MP: 1000
Weak to Water.
Immune to Earth.
Vulnerable to Blind, Old, Sleep, Berserk, Silence, Slow.

AI Script:
AI SCRIPT:
{Fight,Sonic Wave,Specialty}
{Fight,Sonic Wave,Specialty}
{Fight,Sonic Wave,Specialty}
{Fight,Sonic Wave,Specialty}
Stomach Acid
React:Death{
     Escape
     }

"Sonic Wave," AKA Discord, is dumb as hell. Worse yet, Walker is packing !Animals when I accidentally stumble into this fight, so I don't have a quick way to kill it before I get Discorded into oblivion. Worse...er yet, !Animals has a pretty good chance to hurt me because I'm still wearing Bone Mail and I'm a stupid person. !Aim is doing about 900 damage at the start of the fight. I switch to the Dark Bow long enough (one attack) to get a blind out of it, then I switch back to the Hayate Bow for the !Rapid Fires. The first Discord sets my !Aim damage down to 700, and I see where this is going. So, I settle in for what eventually...



... becomes...



... a...



... tedious...



... slog. 70 damage is apparently Walker's level 1 Hayate Bow minimum, because he starts doing 70 damage per hit whether or not !Rapid Fire procs.

It takes me five minutes to kill the Antlion. Walker had just under 300 HP when all was said and done. Great, just... great.



I was being facetious, Krile.

Antlion
Walker Level: 44
Deaths: 0

So, as I was saying when I was RUDELY INTERRUPTED BY A GIANT BUG, I was going to try out !Animals to see what the level 40 animal friend is. But before I get a good chance, all this crap happens:





Hmm. I'm getting some Chekhov's Gun vibes from that splinter. I mean, why would they mention it? But how could a splinter possibly be important?

~And now, ladies and gentlemen, may we have your attention for the best cut scene in video game history:~





Well, I don't know what my new animal friend is going to be, but it sure as hell isn't going to be a turtle.



videogames.txt

You know what, I'm calling it: this is best line in the entire game. This is right up there with Castlevania's "a miserable pile of secrets."

It's a work of art, is what I'm saying.



Love what you do, and you'll never work a day in your life. Or unlife. Or whatever it is that Exdeath has that sustains him. (Sap? Evil sap?)



No, see, now you're trying too hard.



My 14-month old just learned the word "turtle," so now she wanders around shouting it for no reason. She has a couple of turtle toys, but she'll just yell "turtle" all the time even without them. I read this line in her voice. Exdeath is basically a giant baby anyway.



"An-cient Mut-ant Sage-y Tur-tles! An-cient Mut-ant Sage-y Tur-tles! Sarcastic jerks in a half shell. Turtle power!"

Well, now that THAT is over, maybe I can finally try out !Animals:





Skunk appears to blind and poison all enemies. Not too shabby! It's still not worth switching back to !Animals for it, but it may make it worth using for walking around from time to time. Using the Bone Mail though makes nightingale hurt Walker, so !Animals is kind of risky. I mean, more than normal. Maybe I need to use my OMNI RANGER options to dip into another Ranger-ish ability. I have the bright idea to switch right before I get to the pyramid:



Yeah! This will be fun! A brand new mechanic, and a challenge to go with it. I kind of wanted to try the Beastmaster solo, but I don't know enough about the game to do it right, and I kind of wanted to fly blind anyway. This will let me try it out in a new dungeo--



FUCK.

I figure out their gimmick really fast, and unfortunately I have literally no answer for them. !Catch is worthless, obviously, since I haven't yet caught anything to unleash on them. I suppose there is a tiny chance I could have whittled both of them down and happened to proc !Rapid Fire to kill both of them at once, but that doesn't happen. Walker dies eventually, because I have no way to heal while wearing Bone Mail, and I can't kill the second one fast enough before the first revives. BOOOOO

Let's look at their AI script now:

code:

Gargoyle
HP: 5000
MP: 300
Absorbs Holy.
Vulnerable to Death, Stone, Poison, Blind, Old, Sleep, Paralyze, Berserk, Silence, Stop, Slow

AI Script:
Condition:Alone{
     Unhide Monster: Gargoyle
     }
{Fight,Fight,Specialty}
{Fight,Fight,Specialty}
{Fight,Fight,Specialty}
{Fight,Fight,Specialty}
{Fusion,Fight,Specialty}

Oh. They only have 5,000 HP each. I have half a mind to just go back there and kill them with !Aim and the Hayate Bow, but I'll play it safe next time and use !Time again to give myself some options. But I keep !Catch to try it out and I head to Moore to get the Chicken Knife, because I forgot to do it before. I won't use it against the Gargoyles because I haven't powered it up yet:

[IMG]

I've run form some battles, but I haven't made a concerted effort toward it yet. But I'll do that some other time. I don't need it yet, and I'd rather do more interesting things. Namely:







I have a bit of trouble with !Catch because the Hayate Bow kills everything in such a way that they rarely get low on HP. I'm doing about 1,100 with it without a proc of !Rapid Fire. !Rapid Fire is another problem, because it takes away my ability to carefully control who I hit, and how hard I hit them. I could downgrade to the Killer Bow, but that can randomly kill a monster. My next best bet is the Dark Bow, which represents a huge downgrade to damage. It's normally not a problem, unless I'm getting Aeroga'd for 1,000 by a Gigas. I think it's just something I can find a way to adapt to. When I finally do catch a monster, I'm a little disappointed that the !Release is a one-shot. Unless I can experiment and find a really powerful !Release, !Catch isn't going to do me a lot of good in boss battles. i mean, as it is I'm going to go back to !Time for the Gargoyles, but I'd like to try different things in different battles.

I play around with !Catch for a while while I grind for another level, but I don't have great luck with it. I catch a few different things and release them to try them out, but nothing is really overwhelming. The biggest problem is those fucking Elm Gigases that can do over 1,000 damage with Aeroga. Jesus Christ does that make wandering around more trouble than it's worth. Then I realize that Aeroga probably triggers reflect, and I switch to the Reflect Ring. I don't ever heal with magic in combat anyway, and I'm not using !Time right now, so I probably should have done that as soon as I switched to !Catch. That fixes the problem and I enjoy my !Catch experimentation a lot more afterward. I try out the Hypno Crown just in the off chance that it widens my HP margin for !Catch, but it doesn't. The only really dank !Release that I find is from those Elm Gigases. The first one I release uses it's Hurricane on a Sleep Mage, and I'm able to immediately !Catch the mage. The mage, unsurprisingly, releases as Sleep. Everything else releases Quicksand and Entangle, which aren't bad but aren't worth packing !Catch for any length of time for them. I'll definitely switch to !Time to deal with the Gargoyles and see what I can get in the pyramid. I am bound to get pleasantly surprised eventually. I was pleased to see Hurricane out of the Gigas when I expected Aeroga.

Oh, I also pick up another Dark Matter from a rare drop from some Sandepedes. Oh, and by the way, they're called scorpions, game. Scorpions.



So let's roll up on the Gargoyles again:



I open with Slowga, then I get Haste going ASAP (no pun intended), and !Rapid Fire procs out of the Hayate Bow three times in a row, hitting each of them for about 1300 each time. So close! With both of them teetering after four actions, I let loose another !Aim, thinking, "Even if I kill one of them, I'll be able to attack again before the other one revives it." NOPE. Fucking thing revives almost instantly. Listen, game. I get the gimmick. I really do. I figured it out the first time, even before I looked at the AI script. I've solved the puzzle, so don't make this harder than it needs to be. If you want me to kill them really, truly, simultaneously, then just be clear about it. Stop being a passive aggressive dick about your stupid gargoyles. No one even likes them because they're boring and lame.

But after a couple more cycles of getting both of them low on HP, killing one, and a revive, I'm finally able to kill them both at once. I am never able to beat a revive to the punch, even with haste and slowga.



Pain in my ass.

Gargoyles
Walker Level: 46
Deaths: 1

Onto the pyramid for real this time. I witch back to !Catch and the Reflect Ring, because I have no idea what is in here.











Fuck this place. I die four times before I ditch !Catch. I'm switching to something less goofy than !Catch and something that will serve me specifically for the hideous amount of physical attacks that are being thrown around this place.



After I was done with !Mix, I wanted to use something Ranger-ish, hence !Catch. But, hey, the D&D ranger has divine spells, so that's how I'm going to justify this.

!White is great here, actually. I have to switch out of the Bone Mail, which means I'm switching back into the Elf Mantle as well. Protect and the Elf Mantle can make easy work of most of the attacks in the pyramid, and there's some nasty undead that can be killed with !White. !Aim and the Hayate Bow is still a better way to kill everything, though, so I stick to that. Dealing with the Mecha Heads and Zephrus is easy with Berserk. I'm benefiting from !Rapid Fire on the Hayate Bow, though, because a few things have pretty thick armor that I don't need to find another option to deal with. With Berserk/Protect, I'm able to deal with almost all of the trapped chests. The Damned are simple. The Archaeosaurs are easy enough after a berserk. The Objects d'Art I have no answer to because of their ability to turn Walker to stone. But I discover that I can run from them, so I pump up the Chicken Knife a bunch spamming one trapped chest to see it I can get it to give me a different encounter. (I can't). I end up ditching only two chests in the whole place, only because of the Objects d'Art. The Mummies go really easily the first time I see them, but the second time I see them one of them uses Danse Macabre and kills Walker. Just another death onto the pile for this stupid place. I go with the Angel Ring the next time I run into them, and they're dealt with easily.

All in all, I pillage the place for quite a haul:

White Robe
Black Robe
Earth Hammer
Dark Matter x 6
Ribbon
Elixir x 3
Golden Shield
Thornlet
Protect Ring
Gold Hairpin
Ice Shield
Cursed Ring

Too bad almost all of this is worthless to me. Here's what Walker can use without setting an ability:

Elixir x 3
Protect Ring
Cursed Ring

But that's ok. The Protect Ring is better than the Angel Ring, and might get some use between the Elf Mantle and the Reflect Ring.

I ended up dying five times in the pyramid. But I am done with this place.

I completely forget about this nonsense on the way out of the pyramid:

code:

Melusine
HP: 20000
MP: 500
Weak to Fire.
Absorbs Lightning, Ice.
Immune to Water, Air, Earth, Holy, Poison.
Vulnerable to Blind, Sleep, Paralyze, Confuse, Silence, Stop, Slow.

AI Script:
{Fight,Fight,Nothing}
{Bolt3,Fight,Nothing}
{Ice 3,Fight,Nothing}
{Fight,No-Damage Magic,Nothing}
{Bolt3,No-Damage Magic,Nothing}
{Ice 3,No-Damage Magic,Nothing}
{Fight,No-Damage Magic,No-Damage Magic}
{Bolt3,No-Damage Magic,No-Damage Magic}
{Ice 3,No-Damage Magic,No-Damage Magic}
React:Magic:No-Damage Magic{
     Change Target:Whole party
     Ice 3
     Barrier Change
     Unhide Monster: Merugene (Random form)
     }

I am still packing !White for this battle because I was caught off guard. It works well for me, though. Luckily, I'm trying out the Protect Ring and not the Reflect Ring, because form the look of things with her Barrier Changes, she absorbs whatever element she's slinging at any given time. I feel like I'm cheating when she starts out with high defense. A normal attack lands for 0, but whenever I proc !Rapid Fire, I hit for 2,800 after four hits. By the time she switches her script and goes down to 0 defense, I've already hit her for over 11,000. Her attacks have had a negligible effect on Walker. When she switches forms, !Aim starts dealing 1400 damage, and she dies soon thereafter. I tihnk the only chance she had was the two times she tried Entice. She succeeded once, but Walkedr had enough HP to sustain shooting himself with a bow (however the hell that works).



This, x 4, erryday.



Melusine
Walker Level: 47
Deaths: 0

Not too shabby for yet another boss battle I've run into by accident. A scout Ranger is always prepared.

As for the sealed weapons:



The Yoichi Bow seems to have a critical hit rate of about 40-50%, and it hits hard:



A normal hit at level 47 is doing 1,200-1,300, but critical hits do almost 4,000. Not too shabby. I also pick up the Assassin Dagger because it's one of the only other things that I can use in the Sealed Castle. I get the Apollo Harp because reasons.

While I'm bandying about trying to remember where Mirage is, I find a witch tagging along with some slugs and I get this from a single battle with the witch:



Sounds like a cool rare drop and I'm sure it's great, but too bad Walker can never use it. I'm sure if I were grinding for such an item it would have taken me 20 battles to get it.

When I do find the Phantom Village, I take my time exploring. I buy a Rune Bow, just in case I need to silence a jerk without using !White in the future.

I find the Thief Knife, so that's fun.

I buy Speed because I'm dumb and I forgot to get it in Walse Castle's basement.

I go all the way around the world with Boco to get the Mirage Vest, because it's fun and why not?

I also get the Black Chocobo...

I buy all the face-meltingly awesome spells in the secret magic shop: Quick, Banish, Death, Osmose, Arise, and Dispel. I just hope I can use them with level-6 magic abilities. (I have a vague memory of some top-level spells being usable only while in the class itself, not by cross-class usage, but I might be thinking of a different game).

I buy the Black Cowl and the Black Garb because theyre both pretty good for Walker. (There's no other armor at the regular armor shop that Walker can use.)

I buy the Hermes Sandals, but I finally run out of enough money to buy both the Coral Ring and the Flame Ring. Then again, I have yet to sell anything, ever, so now is as good a time as any. I have been looting pretty much with impunity, regardless of Walker's limited equipping options. Now I'm going to sell everything that I can never conceivably use. I sell conservatively and keep a ton of corner-case stuff like the Sleep Sword that I'll likely never use, but I keep them anyway because I'm paranoid. I also keep the stuff that sells for 1 GP or 5 GP, like my two Ribbons. That brings me from:

35,952 GP

~to~

106,267 GP

That's enough for both the Flame Ring and the Coral Ring.

The only thing left that I could buy is Elixirs at 50,000 apiece. I have 15 in my inventory, and I know where to grind for more if I need some, so I'm all set. I spend what little is left on Hi Potions and Cottages. Walker is broke to !Zenigage won't be an option for a while, but other than that I'm all set.

I'm going to stop here and switch it up a little bit. Instead of asking the goons what ability to use, I'm going to handle that myself but ask the goons what to do next. Walker has just completed the pyramid, and he has both an airship and a Black Chocobo. He can do any of the following:

Island Shrine (for... shits and giggles? The rest of the sealed weapons are practically worthless to Walker.)
Fork Tower (for Flare and Holy)
Easterly Falls (for Leviathan?)
Sea Trench (for Meteor, I think?)
North Mountain (for Bahaumut)

I'm going to do at least two of the above before I go into The Void. So I want the goons to suggest two of the above for me to do before I move on to The Void. I'll wait a couple of days to tally the votes and then I'll do the top two suggestions, and maybe more before I head into The Void. I'll probably do the side quests in one update and The Void in the last update.

Walker is almost there. Nothing is certain yet, especially if I refuse to cave in and use !Mix again on Neo Exdeath. But I've already gotten further than I thought I could with a bad job and playing semi-blind. I think I can pull this off. Help me, goons!

Walker's Current Level: 47
Total Deaths: 65
Animal Friends: 7 (Rabbit, Squirrel, Bees, Nightingale, Flying Squirrel, Falcon, Skunk)