Part 17: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I: The Canal Project
Hey everybody, and welcome again to Final Fantasy. This time we're going with a Nothing But Ninjas playthrough, with the names taken from another piece of treasured childhood nostalgia. I was personally tempted to go with Wei, Lo, Hung, and Wang but my better nature took over.
To get Ninjas, however, we have to start with thieves. Leo and Raph are in the back because I intend for them to be my primary damage dealers while Mike and Don serve as meatshields.
We look like blue haired farmers.
Initial equipment outlay is 240 gold, which makes them at least cheap to feed. Although they have rapiers, the proto-Ninjas don't have nearly the offense of fighters or even red mages. Wooden armor offers slightly more than a quarter of the protection that chain armor. It's noteworthy that the word for this armor could also be translated as leather. It's debatable whether this was meant to be some kind of lacquered wooden construct or something more like the leather armor that you'd expect from a D&D clone.
This is a good time to talk about level ups. For each level, your characters are going to have some stats that are guaranteed to increase and some that have about a 25% chance to increase. Similarly, each level a character is guaranteed to gain VIT/4 HP with some levels having an additional bonus amount added on top. The level where the extra boost comes is going to be same, but the amount is pretty random. Most classes have one or two strong stats that increase almost every level. For the Fighter it's Strength, while the Black Belt maxes out on Vitality. For the Thief it's Luck, which is about the second least useful statistic. Luck affects chance of running away (the Thief starts out with enough luck to make this a certainty) and the chance of getting a preemptive strike. It could be worse, though. Black Mages get intelligence, which does absolutely nothing.
If you're interested in doing so, you can cheese the system by saving before a level up and reloading until you get a result you like. Since this playthrough is going to need every advantage, I'm making Mike and Don specialize in Agility and Vitality, while Raph and Leo get Strength. After this level it's time to go after Garland.
You know, I never thought about this, but Garland looks a lot like Shredder. Funny, that. The damage you're seeing here is pretty typical.
Eventually he goes down and we go to claim our reward.
Hey, this time there's actually four people!
Pirates vs. future Ninjas is pretty much a one-sided battle in favor of our intrepid heroes. It's so much easier when you can take four down per turn.
I can only imagine how lonely this poor bastard is feeling right now.
After a bit of wholesale slaughter we upgrade our weapons and armor. Since thieves can't use the silver sword, the scimitar and sabre are our best options. The sabre is more powerful, but less accurate at 5% to HIT% compared to the scimitar's 10%. Your number of hits is equivalent to 1 + Hit%/32, and the thief's base HIT% only goes up by 2% per level. Using the scimitar can get us a second hit 3 levels sooner resulting in an increase in the chance to get a crit. Since thieves live and die by crits, this is important. Copper bracelets aren't an improvement on the armor rating compared to the wooden armor, but do penalize our evasion a bit less. Every point counts.
Now we need to get some healing and pure potions before going on. So, back to the grind...and it's not easy by any stretch.
Ahh, dammit Mike!
Not you too Don!
Eventually we get enough scratch together to get some supplies. This has the dual effect of getting us enough experience to be able to handle the Marsh Cave.
Battles like this one are a lot less lethal now that it's unlikely that all four people will be paralyzed at once.
Skipping to the ostensible bosses of the cave, things start off on a pretty good note. Crits like this are pretty much necessary to kill these enemies.
This doesn't last. I foolishly tried to spread out my damage in the hopes of getting two down with no overflow and paid for my mistake.
The battle finally turns in our favor, however, and Leo and Raph are left to limp back to Elfland on their own.
Astos provides an even greater problem than the wizards did. First off, his defense is more than a match for the attacks we're capable of at the moment.
This is a bit more like it, but Astos will require 6 hits just like this before he goes down.
This result is far more likely. I saw it a good dozen times in this fight, especially since I missed the screen capture twice. Even assuming that RUB misses, Astos level 2 attack spells and FASTed attacks are more than sufficient to kill every member of your group if you don't get enough critical hits to kill him first.
In the end, however, Astos goes down when Raph cherry-taps him.
Once the Mystic Key is acquired it's time to raid some treasure chests. I ignored these earlier, but with four thieves to equip on very limited funds I can't resist grabbing this.
No idea what the hell this is meant to be.
Next up is Astos treasure room, which actually yields something we can use. It also has the Power Staff, which is actually very good for cash even if you can't use it. I believe it sold for something like 12,000 gil.
All the special purpose swords that were dismissed before come into their own, providing a big boost over the scimitar, sabre, and falchon. They're not as good as the Silver Sword would be, but are a real help.
The silver knife provides the same power as the scimitar but an even better bonus to HIT%. Everybody gets a Silver Bracelet, giving them equivalent defense to chain mail. It's a bit behind the time, but it's the best we can do for now.
Next time: We raid the Earth cave.