Part 65: Part the Seventeth
Let's Low-Level Run Final Fantasy 6: Part the SeventethUnresolved Sidequests
No, Edgar, that's not how you kill a Cactrot!
Anyway, I may have forgotten one miniboss in Kefka's Tower. It's technically optional but a fun encounter, as these things go.
Why Atma feels like chilling in the crapper is beyond me, but he's had an eternity to contemplate things. How 'bout a courtesy flush there, fella?
Once again, we can see the benefit of the Debilitator. Spamming Flare would ignore his defense, sure, but it also does pathetic damage. Hitting a weakness is much nicer. And if a boss doesn't have a weakness? Make one. Several times, because Edgar will always set Earth, Pearl, or Wind first because he's a dipshit.
And then, for the sake of completion, let's hit up Cyan's dream. The Dream Stooges are pretty much a joke even if you aren't at a decent level, but they happen to have some impressive vulnerabilities all the same. Who makes a boss susceptible to instant death?
It was mentioned, but the dream is the only place you'll ever see Io. How does that work, did Cyan invent a robot in his nightmares? How does Gau find it on the Veldt? Io uses Flare Star when Raged, which is fun enough. I'll discuss something fun about Flare Star in an upcoming video.
I shouldn't have even recorded this. I really have no interest in beating Wrexsoul "correctly." But anyway this just proves he's silly at every level. X-Zone doesn't discriminate.
Speaking of things not recorded, I didn't bother with Hidon. Here's how you beat him: Throw him three Elixirs and he dies. Wowzers. Though I regret not getting GrandTrain in the end.
The Last Veldt Trip, Honestly (Probably)
Before actually hitting up the Veldt, let's fight outside Thamasa. You would pretty much never do this unless you wanted to fight the enemies here, which don't appear anywhere else. There's only three of them, and the one we want's right here: Prussian. This unassuming Rage is actually pretty handy later.
Once on the Veldt, we'll need to collect some Rages for the upcoming battles, though I'm not entirely sure how many I'll use. PowerDemon uses Flare and is undead; that's pretty handy. Red Wolf is basically a generic physical attack/Wind God setup Rage but with some nice status protections that StrayCat and the like don't get. Still Life isn't really there to be Leapt, I just think it's funny when it appears on the Veldt. Prussian's been mentioned. Chaos Dragon has Disaster, that multi-status effect ability Skull Dragon used so ineffectively against us earlier. It will be much more handy in our employ. Finally, there's Magic Urn, possibly the best defensive Rage around.
Kefka's Tower, Possibly For The Last Time
I wound up having to fix this anyway but the idea here was to set up three groups that can beat their respective bosses and which don't have too much gear overlap, as I'll be rotating all the good equipment between groups each time I switch. Thus, Strago/Relm/Gogo go in different groups, Force Shield/Armor users are split up a bit, and so forth. It almost completely works, but the group with Terra can't do what I need it to do.
Cyan warms the bench because there's really nothing left for him to do. He can be a worse mage than everyone else or he can Dispatch for crappy damage. Meh. Gogo is much more useful. As for Umaro, well, you know. Umaro.
Ouch. Throw still renders both high defense and high MBlock% setups moot, and Outsiders attack fast and furious. Use Smoke Bombs/Warp Stones.
I send Gau's group left. This was intentional, but I should have sent Gau right, as we'll see.
This causes Gau's group to go left, Terra's group to go right, and Celes's group to go up the center, which puts her up against...
...Guardian. I sent Locke along on a lark, and technically you should send him along to steal from Guardian for a Force Armor or Ribbon, but I don't have time to actually get it. Guardian uses a variety of battle programs, but the only ones that you have to concern yourself with are the Ultros Program's tentacle (still causing full party wipes an entire game later), Dadaluma Program's Throw (not a big deal), and the entire Atma Weapon Program. Mercifully, even at my low level he never engages the Atma Weapon Program. Use Life3 and Bolt3 and do what you can.
Celes's group isn't done, of course. We've got the Statues to go with and the weakest group (by design) is engaging the weakest statue (by happenstance). Poltergeist aggressively employs fire-based abilities and can do a Stop into Blaster combo if she's allowed. I say allowed because she's vulnerable to Stop herself. Whoops. Since she has inherent Haste, Stop wears off very quickly and will constantly need to be reapplied. It's preferable to the alternative. Poltergeist will use Flare Star, but as you'll see in the video, Flare Star is actually one of the single least threatening things in a LLG. The reason? Flare Star's damage, unlike almost all other abilities, is based on the level of your target. When we're under level 10, the damage isn't even triple digits. Plus it's Fire-based so it can be absorbed. For crying out loud, that's just sad.
Gau's group is up next against the middle statue, Doom. Doom is more ice-based, and she doesn't have any real status vulnerabilities (other than Slow), but she's a lot easier to deal with than the other statues simply because she doesn't do anything too exciting. In fact, with the right Rage Gau will be immune to her moves, and will be able to hit her with non-elemental unblockable defense-ignoring damage. I mean Ultima could do that too but whatever.
I decided to use Setzer with the Fixed Dice and Offering since he couldn't do much else and it's fun to show off. For the most part his rolls at lv6 are an underwhelming bust, but I got one spectacular roll that did a crapton of damage to Doom. That made it all worthwhile.
Terra's group isn't really suited to take on the last of the Warring Triad, so instead I break out the heavy artillery. A mix of Gau, Gogo, Relm, and Mog may seem strange, but here's the thing: I need death protection. Gau and Gogo can get it by Raging a monster with it. Mog can use a Safety Bit. But I don't have another Safety Bit... but Relm can use the Memento Ring, which does the same thing. So that's the team. I also use an unorthodox gear setup: Bolt absorption and defense on Gau. If you guessed that's because of the Rage we're using, you're right. But what's so hard that we'd have to do that?
Goddess is easily the hardest of the three statues in a LLG. She spams Bolt2 and Bolt3 unceasingly, but that's not the problem. The problem is that she uses Charm (that thing I used on Storm Dragon), multiple magic attacks, and Overcast. Overcast sets Condemned on the whole party, and unlike regular Condemned, when the counter reaches zero the affected character becomes a zombie. Nasty stuff, and the only reliable way to stop it is to either be undead, have death protection, or both. Conveniently, the PowerDemon Rage is both, and casts Flare!
But there's the rub: Once she's taken enough damage, Goddess will start casting Quasar, Ultima and GrandTrain's baby brother. It's defense-ignoring and unblockable, and it will kill us no matter what kind of Rage I employ. There's nothing I can do to survive it (she'll cast it faster than you can Life3 yourself).
I said survive, of course. Because it can be stopped. Just not through the easy ways, like Mute or Berserk or something; Goddess doesn't have any piddly status vulnerabilities. No, the only way to make sure she doesn't cast Quasar is to deplete her 19000 MP before she reaches the stage where she starts casting it. Sound tedious? Oh my yes. Now you could bother Rasping her but that will destroy your soul, so there's a way to do it at warp speed and auto-pilot and it involves the very same PowerDemon Rage and a special little trick.
When you're running away, Rage's next attack won't trigger until you stop. Normally you'd flee the battle before being able to make any use of this, but you can't flee from boss battles. So the "trick" is, Rage PowerDemon (to absorb/reflect her Bolt spells, healing her and thus keeping her from hitting Quasar stage), start running away... and hold L&R until Goddess completely runs out of MP.
Really. That's the trick. Oh and then you have to actually kill her because she doesn't have Die if MP = 0. Fortunately I am an idiot savant and found a way to get everyone back on their feet after Gau and Mog drain Goddess dry.
That's it for the Warring Triad. Next time, we'll finish off the LLG by beating Kefka's tower of baroque self-aggrandizement and then beat up the clown-winged angel himself. And that'll be the end of it, thank God; I wouldn't want to try the Dragon's Den in a LLG, but it doesn't exist in this version so I'm safe!