LogFAQs > #948041146

So uh... I may have overdone things.

Cloister of the Dead is just a boss rush so after clearing the first room once I decide to leave that for now and try the superbosses again. The problem is both Neo Shinryu and Omega Mk II just hit way too hard, even Shell'd up their basic spells do more damage than my party has HP, so I decide to knuckle down and level grind for some time. I find a really good spot (near where Omega II is) that spawns my beloved Dinozombies way more frequently than their earlier spot, and also has Medusas which give a bunch of EXP. I swap everybody to Freelancer so they can all equip Ribbons and not have to worry about being petrified, and set them all to have EXP Up. I then just sit there and mash A while listening to a podcast for a couple hours, going back to save every now and then in case of a crash.

This turns out to be an extremely effective method of grinding, and before I know it I've gone from Level 50 to Level 80! The party's HP now looks capable of withstanding a hit from the supers, so I gear up and try Neo Shinryu.

OK is this guy broken or something? Because like 80% of my attacks that connect (do the animation and everything) just don't have a number come up. This is super frustrating because occasionally numbers do come up so I know they're hitting, is this done intentionally to hide the hits so the player doesn't know how they're doing or were my attacks actually missing or what >_>

Anyway, for the actual fight. It takes several attempts even with our new superpowers. I quickly remember the Angel Ring is the perfect accessory for every single boss fight in this Temple, after foolishly attempting to use elemental rings to absorb some of his attacks. I keep Bartz as a Dual-Wielding Freelancer and the other three as Mimes. Meteor never shows any damage up, but then I know it's a weird spell anyway, and he absorbs Holy unfortunately. Bartz does 2K hits here and there but Lenna is the main force here, Flare is the only spell that even remotely reliably shows up as doing damage. One time I Mime Doublecasting Flare across the 3 characters, and the first four hits don't show damage numbers but the last two do.

The fight takes a long time, largely because Lenna is the only person actually doing proper damage. Fortunately we're immune to most of Shinryu's fancy attacks, he attempts to cast White Hole dozens of times and it never once succeeds, I'm guessing that's something to do with our Ribbons+Angel Rings. With Krile and Faris pretty much on support duty it's easy enough to keep everybody healed and buffed, and Quick helps in that regard. Eventually one of the Flares does him in and he casts a rather pathetic final couple spells that don't do much to us, and fades away. I may be a bit overleveled...

Ultima Weapon in hand (not literally, it doesn't recommend it above the other fancy weapons I have), we head to take down the other guy. Omega Mk II is an entirely different beast to Neo Shinryu, with his own gimmicks. The most key thing is his constant Reflect, that can't be Dispelled or removed in any way I could think of. Again it takes several tries to figure out a strategy here. Bartz's physical hits never connect, so I decide to try casting Reflect on our team (after buffing them, of course) and bouncing spells off onto him. This works, thankfully! But Omega absorbs most elements, and his one weakness keeps changing. Krile bounces Libra onto him to see his weakness at any given time, but I'm still having trouble making much headway. I would get a couple spells off, then he would cast several major damaging hits that seem to ignore our defences and I have to take a while to heal, during which time he learns to bounce his spells off of us to heal himself, or to bounce them off of him to hit us. Clever robot!

I gather that Quick combined with Dualcast is probably unstoppable, but given that it can only be cast upon the user Faris is the only one who can use it. I eventually decide to use it instead of Dualcast on Faris, and after Hastega and Quick she basically uses it to Dualcast White Wind on our Reflected party. Meanwhile several attempts in I finally have the bright idea to try equipping Aim on Bartz, his attacks connect now but do 0 damage. I then desperately try Rapid Fire, which... works! Obscenely well! With Dual Wield + two of the most powerful swords in the game, one single Rapid Fire command triggers 8 hits dealing around 30K damage total! I have no idea why this does damage but I will take it! Sadly Omega outcheeses us by deciding to just yeet Bartz out of the battle entirely with Encircle, and thanks to Reflect running out at a bad time we lose again.

I head raring back in knowing I have this super lame strat that works for some reason, and this time we succeed. Omega fails to Encircle Bartz the first time so he gets two Rapid Fires off, and then Lenna bounces a dual Blizzaga off of herself to finish things off. Force Shield get! I really didn't think I would be this overleveled from one session's grinding >_>

I still haven't done the regular superbosses or the boss rush, so that is to come tomorrow. Strangely upon returning to our world a cutscene plays where some structure seems to drop into the sea. I wasn't paying 100% attention but it looked like it was just a tall rock with a face on it, like those Moai things kinda. I take the sub around the world but can't find where it landed or what it was. I do discover Mr Clio who gives us some ingame stats, though.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
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