Part 11: The Saga of Loq: Chapter the Third

The Saga of Loq: Chapter the Third

Now that we've gotten some good equipment and spells, it's time for the to start.



Our first step is going to be the volcano. To to Jeffe..er..Loq's fragility, it's probably best to go easiest to hardest.



It's kind of neat how they designed the first floor with the intent of making it look like you're climbing into the caldera of an active volcano. Final Fantasy...making Geologists cry for more than two decades.



I didn't highlight these enemies before, but these are the elementals that you run into in the Volcano. They're a lot like the Earth elementals, but in a rather weird twist they actually have less attack and HP. Their only advantage lies in a better evasion score, and that's not even an issue at this point.



Here, Loq is sitting next to the most pointless guaranteed encounter square in the entire game. If he were to step to the right he'd run into some FIREs, but by the simple expedient of walking on the left side of the path it's entirely avoidable.



On the final floors of the dungeon the Grey Worm replaces the FIRE as a guardian for chest.



I went ahead and decided to murder this dragon despite not being able to wear the armor. You might be wondering a bit about the advisability of using an ICE3 charge right before Kary. Well...



First, this is what we're looking like before going in to the fight with Kary. I've completely exhausted my ICE3 charges at this point.



That's because contrary to what a player might expect, Kary is not weak to ice. In fact, she's resistant to it. Once again, Nintendo Power was VERY wrong all those years ago. Instead, she's weak to Status effects. So, the first order of business is to do something about her attacks. Kary can hit you up to six times, and has a respectable attack power. SLO2 will fix that.



She's still got spells that she can use, however, but MUTE fixes that. Add in a couple of RUSES and she's more or less harmless now.



Then we go ahead and buff our attack...



And for the finishing touch we confuse her so that she starts to hit herself.



So to summarize, we magically turned Kary into a drooling retard who couldn't talk and kept hitting herself, then beat her to death. Classy.



After that lovely bit of ultra-violence, let's keep rolling along. The next stop is the Ocean Palace, where there's really nothing of significance other than Kraken.



By the time we get down that far, this is what we look like. I conserved my magic a bit on this trip down, since the Zeus Gauntlet is so useful.



Kraken is actually a very dangerous boss, since it can hit you 8 times with each attack. As you can see it did some significant damage to Loq before he could get RUSE up. Luckily Kraken is actually weak to the element you'd expect, so once you've raised your defense it's a simple matter to spam LIT3 until it dies.



Since I'm doing this in something like the storyline order, we haven't actually being to Lefein. The trek through the wilderness has the possibility of being difficult for Loq, but he pulls through and gets the chime.



While we're there, let's pay a visit to the last magic shop in the game. It's "hidden" by virtue of being off to the right of the town through a gap in the walls.




There's only two spells here. LIF2 still doesn't work in combat, but it does revive a dead character with full HP. It can cut down on potion and other healing use, but it's a question of whether or not you want to use those spell charges on the spell. NUKE is the most powerful damaging spell in the game, being 25% stronger than FADE. It's about the only 8th level black magic that's worth a damn.



Now that I look at the Mirage Tower, in some ways it just looks like a giant sandy pile.



The Guards in this case are incredibly weak to lightning, making cutting through them a snap.



Pausing before going up to the Sky Castle, here's a snapshot of Loq. Most people don't see a red mage at a high enough level to notice this in general play, but for some reason he gets Level 8 spell charges despite having no Level 8 spells.



The blue dragon is, for some unfathomable reason, weak to Fire. I don't know either.



Evidently the difference between a bad man and an evil man is using NUKE. This is actually the second time this happened to me on this climb up the tower. The first time I was so shocked that I missed the screen shot.



Further up the Castle I head off to one side to gather this up. The ProCape acts as a shield that's equippable by anyone and provides 8 defense, about half as much as the best shields the Knight can use. Many people believe that because of the similarity between this and the ProRing as far as names go that it has a similar effect, but all it provides is armor protection.



Right below the ProCape is Cloth Armor. Seriously, I think someone was just screwing with the treasure at this point.



Hey, using magic to shore up your weak points is unfair! WzVampires also cast MUTE, making them one of the two enemies to actually do so. The Grey Naga is the other.



Right before Tiamat, this is what we're looking at for Loq. However, all of this doesn't really matter.



What matters is having either the BANE spell, the Bane Sword, or possibly BRAK. Tiamat's weakness is poison/stone, so a fair number of instant death spells will actually work on her. I had to use it a few times before it would stick, but it's certainly easier than chewing through 1,000 HP at this point.



Once out of the tower, Loq pawns off the XCALIBER because as a red mage it's of no use to him what-so-ever.



Next up is the search for Warmech. I actually went up after it in my late 30s, but by the time I actually found it I was level 50. It can take quite a while.



The killing blow. Warmech is a tough nut to crack, since its attacks can do as much as 500 damage on Loq. It's a bit weird, but fighting it you actually hope that it will use NUKE the first couple of times. Once I got a couple of RUSE spells CUR3 can be used to repair the damage. After that, Warmech has no elemental or other weaknesses so the best bet is to load up FAST and go to town.



After defeating Warmech, the only thing left to deal with is the Temple of Fiends. At maximum level, there's no incentive to hang around so it's pretty much a case of getting through as quickly as possible.



Fighting Lich, there's no point in putting up any kind of defensive spells. He's not vulnerable to MUTE, and he's pretty much going to spam spells at you so the best option is to use FAST and pound away until he dies. He's got 500 HP, so he will go down quickly. I've mentioned it before, but none of the Fiends retain their earlier elemental weakness.



Kary is a bit more of a problem since she has a powerful attack as well as some halfway decent magic. She attacks more than she does anything else, however, so RUSE and FAST are the best things to use.



Kraken is a carbon copy of Kary, only with 2 more attacks and a tendency to use LIT2 and INK. Adding LIT2 actually makes him far less dangerous than he was earlier.



After Kraken is dealt with, we have some new equipment to pick up. The wonderful thing about the Masmune and the reason it's a key to so many strategies is that anybody can use it, even character who haven't class changed. Onward!



Overall Tiamat is the most unpredictable of the Fiends the second time through. If she uses her special attacks or magic it's not a problem, but there's a chance that she'll instead unleash her physical attack. You have to prepare for both, which can drag the battle on.



I start off the fight with Chaos by using RUSE to block his physical attack. With 2 attacks at 100 power it's a threat that can't be ignored. In retrospect, I should have waited for him to cast CUR4 before attacking and spent the turns restoring my lost HP with CUR3. The AI on Chaos isn't conditional, so his casting CUR4 isn't a response to damage, it's just part of his attack pattern. The worst part is that CUR4 doesn't restore HP according to a formula or anything like that, it simply resets the target's HP value to the maximum number. If Chaos had one HP left it would bring him up to 2000.



After seeing the CUR4, I go for broke attacking him. As you can see, it comes right down to the wire. I think I had 5 HP at the start of the round, and simply went first. And with that, we complete the adventures of Loq.



Next time: Bonus content Part 1