Part 55: Part the Sevth
Let's Low-Level Run Final Fantasy 6: Part the SevthNarshe Again
Narshe's shops upgrade after the Magitek Research Facility. This is normally pretty pointless because everything you get there and in the Sealed Cave is better but in the case of Locke there's an upgrade to back-row weapons which is very nice.
Terra can also kit out with a Tiara, which is yet another marginal increase in Magic Power. Considering we need her damage output and all, it's nice that she can equip so many things that boost it. Note that if you were leveling her with Zoneseek she'd be quite insane with all this gear and two Earrings.
Setzer, never one for sucker bets, attempts to just walk away when Lone Wolf and Mog throw down. Unfortunately the game will not actually allow us to do this.
Now you'd have to be pretty dense to skip Mog, since not getting him now means you can't recruit him for a long time and you permanently miss the opportunity to acquire one of his Dances, but Mog also joins the party at a disgusting +5 level adjustment which would completely hose our average and we need that low because several people will be joining between then and now and Mog would be a giant fuzzy albatross dragging our efforts down. So he can go jump off a cliff, which is not a metaphor.
Yoink. Who was that guy anyway?
Mmmmmm, a Gold Hairpin. Half MP is kind of nice when you have 45 total.
And thus it's...
The Veldt, Again
Hey, check it out, Intangirs are now not appearing on the Veldt!
Also these guys, whose special is Life3, ages before you can get it. They actually will try to cast it on themselves, but they don't have any MP so it always fails.
We've also got Mag Roaders. Nothing too special about them, really; they're another Rage with Bio, but they have inherent Safe and death protection, something the previous Rage didn't.
Okay, now I'm sure we've all been itching to take this one for a spin. Become none with the Intangir, wild boy!
Yessssssssssss. Raging Intangir gives us so many things: Inherent Haste, Safe, Shell, Float, instant death protection, and immunity to all status ailments. Intangir also has inherent Vanish status (the only Rage that does), and unlike normal Vanish, Gau's will actually refresh every time his turn comes up, making him almost permanently immune to physical attacks. Magic will still hit, but that's no problem, since Intangir absorbs every single element. Only non-elemental magic can even dent it.
And best of all, motherfuckers step back because Gau is about to drop a Meteo on-
I'm sorry, what just happened there?
So anyway it turns out that Intangir's special is not Meteo. It's instead Pep Up, an ability that full-heals a member of the caster's party and kills the caster for the remainder of the fight.
The irony is delicious. Intangir is the single strongest defensive Rage in the game, practically invincible, but because it's guaranteed to kill itself with that stupid magic move it's completely usele- wait a second. Magic?
I thought what I'd do was, I'd become one of those deaf-mutes.
Intangir is immune to all status ailments, but Gau isn't, and if he's Muted before he rages Intangir, he will remain Muted. Since Pep Up is affected, he can no longer kill himself.
Nor can anyone kill him, basically. This fight will go on forever until Gau wins. The problem is offense. Gau will spend 50% of his turns trying in vain to kill himself, and the other half doing basic physical attacks. It's possible to exploit this, but you're really not Raging Intangir to win. You're doing it to not lose. And there's rather a number of bosses Intangir can not-lose against.
Sealed Cave
Moving right along! To the Sealed Cave now. Make sure to encounter some Ings. Absorbs fire, poison, and in a rare case of Rage actually doing the same thing as the monsters it emulates, allows Gau to use Lifeshaver. Quite powerful, though moreso when Gau actually has some HP to lose. Oh, and Ing makes Gau undead. This isn't the first Rage to do that, though it is kind of the first good one. Being undead has a variety of effects, notably that healing effects are reversed, so don't cast Cure on Gau I guess.
Blastinus showed off the right switch, which drops a Ninja on you to fight. Now you're probably wondering, can you Rage Ninja? Yes you can, and it's awesome, so you're probably thinking I went ahead and bit the bullet on the exp from the guy and fought him, or at least encountered him and ran.
Well, you can't do that. At all. Ninja is flagged as an enemy you can't run from, for starters. Insult to injury, a formation of 1x Ninja is not a valid Veldt formation, so while Ninja can be Raged, he can't be flagged to show up from this fight. Ninjas will appear again later in valid formations, and we can flag them then. We also can't run from them then too, but more on that later.
So we'll ignore him. We'll also ignore the rest of the Sealed Cave because it's just running from undead, loot, and a cutscene.
Imperial Banquet
We're sent off to talk to soldiers and whatnot. There's more than enough time to do that and get all the treasure.
Terra even has time to take a piss in the barracks toilet while a trooper watches. Uh.
Now here's a pickle: Four of the soldiers in the palace will attack you when spoken to. It's actually possible to kill them with the right party arrangement and absorb all the experience without incident, but that's boring so we'll just run away.
Running away from these fights works fine, inasmuch as the soldier still counts as talked to and we get a point for it. We don't, however, get the dozen or so points for winning the fights with them. This will prevent us from getting some goodies at the end of the banquet, but the important stuff is still available provided we can talk to all 24 troopers.
Problem is the fourth trooper, a Mega Armor, is an inescapable fight. How do we avoid getting experience? Simple enough: Let the timer expire, which will automatically end the fight.
As long as Mr. Mega Armor is the last guy you speak with, you'll get everybody.
There's more fights we could get into for points, but in this case we have to win, so we'll skip the break and just answer all of Gestahl's questions correctly.
If you did everything right, you'll get the Empire out of Figaro, Doma, and their own base (what's up with that?). You won't, however, get the Tintinabar or Charm Bangle. While I wouldn't mind the latter to lower the encounter rate, it's basically not a problem . None of this matters because we can't go to Doma or Figaro until we do Gestahl's dumb little errand. Well, almost none of it.
Looting the Sealed Cave base is a nice haul, with tons of gold we're gonna need, several elixirs (don't miss the hidden one), and a Back Guard. There's actually already a Back Guard in the Imperial Palace, so right now we'd have two I guess. The Back Guard prevents all back and pincer attacks. A nice touch in a regular game, but kind of a necessity in a LLG.
I hope "there are some treasures you can get" isn't jumping too far ahead of you Blastinus, I kinda had this prepared ahead.
New Characters
Mog: Is not invited to this party is the end of that sentence. A Gold Hairpin is more useful than him right now anyway.