Insane Difficulty: 1.7B-# LLG Run (also introduction) - Insane Difficulty

Terra/Edgar/Banon's Scenario

The beginning of this scenario is bullshit since it's basically praying to the RNG that you don't get too many encounters on the rest of the river. Without Sabin, the Albatrosses take a lot longer to take out and it's much easier for them to live long enough to drop Fireballs and causing a reset. Once you get off the river, going through the Narshe caves isn't all too bad (the security check is still easy). I do like the Rage Belt in the Moogle Caves, but I do miss the Rune Edge :/

Around the World in 80 Days: The Sabin Scenario

Shadow with two Knight Capes is 84% evasion. That's pretty much all that needs to be said until the Phantom Train.

Once I got ahold of the Black Belt, I took a cape off of Shadow and let him dodge counter pretty much every physical attack thrown at the team. I've got a feeling that he's going to be one of my more reliable meatshields in this playthrough purely due to how reliably he can avoid enemy attacks with his absurd Evade% and access to Smoke Bombs.

The Phantom Soul Train was a bit of a challenge, but Ghost Rings took care of Acid Rain, and desperation attacks from Sabin and Cyan took the train down soon enough. Part of me died a little on the inside for not being able to Suplex the train, but c'est la vie.

Baren Falls was a bit of a stumbling block for me. Rizopas' El Nino would instakill Sabin and Cyan no matter what, but then I remembered that Sabin could use the Cotton Robe for extra M.Def. I threw that on him and gave him the Barrier Cube that I got from Banon, and after Cyan used his last action before drowning feeding Sabin a Slim Jim for the Regen, Sabin managed to survive El Nino reliably and regain his HP over time while letting Pummel's Sap take out Rizopas. I was kinda proud of myself for remembering the Barrier Cube.

Unless Stray Cat is available from the get-go on the Veldt (I've never seen it there despite encountering them before Baren Falls), I got all of the available Rages for Gau. Some of them look promising, while some of them are going to be significantly less useful now that Gau is handicapped by his unforgivably low HP (looking at you, Bomb). The Trench was kinda like an easier version of the start of Terra's Scenario, just hoping that I didn't get too many encounters. I bought enough equipment and relics at Nikeah to hold me over during Locke's Scenario and the Narshe battle.

Locke's Scenario

I got a desperation attack off on the Mega Armor guy blocking the alley in the beginning for shits and giggles, but otherwise nothing was different until I got to Celes, and allow me to fangirl for a second:

I love Celes. She's probably my favorite character in BNW to use. Her dialogue overhaul is incredible and I have genuine respect for whomever was in charge of making her sound more like an actual general and not your token jRPG love interest girl. Her skillset revolves entirely around being an accomplished figure of power and leadership, her spell selection allows for unique strategies regarding buffing allies and debuffing/Dispelling enemies, and while she may not be the powerhouse of damage like, say, Cyan or Strago, she makes up for it by being a very powerful asset in battles requiring a defensive or supportive approach. Her contrast with Terra is even more prominent in BNW with the polarizing spells they learn, and even the decision of Apocalypse v. Illumina goes a long way towards this contrast. By the end of the game, she's pretty much a Leo 2.0, complete with a similar armor/relic selection with the Aegis Shield/Oath Veil/Minerva (Leo's got some... interesting choices in armor) and a Hero Ring, with the only differences being the Illumina and the Soul Box, and her offensive stats are pretty potent with the, what is it, +22 to Vigor and +31 to Magic from her gear, and the Aegis Shield makes her alarmingly fast for how versatile she is. She's almost always at the top of my final battle team.

Anyway, once I grabbed ahold of Celes, I decked her out in full Iron gear, tossed her the Black Belt and Knight Cape, and let her Runic/Defend her way through the basement while Locke would Boomerang his way to victory. They make a really good combo together in this dungeon. Getting to the Hell Angel wasn't too rough, and the only real difficulty during the fight was when it would decide to use Tek Laser instead of something Celes could facetank and/or Runic away from Locke.

Dr. Letha, on 28 January 2016 - 05:31 AM, said:

It is. You just have to go out of your way to find the formation.

Dr. Letha, on 28 January 2016 - 05:31 AM, said:

That would be Synchysi.

Dr. Letha, on 27 January 2016 - 09:00 PM, said:

Even better, I've seen a DA-counter trigger on the attack that brought the character to low HP in the first place.

Imperial Assault on Narshe

Y'know, this is probably one of the more memorable parts of the game for me. When I was younger and first played FFVIA (I never owned a SNES so my first genuine introduction to the game was the GBA port), having your three groups merge back into one in the Elder's House and making the decision to defend the Esper up on the cliffs of Narshe was fucking badass and it felt like the definitive moment for the first half of the game. All the talk and speculation about the unearthed Esper and what it did and how to defend it really set the tone for this battle. You, the player, are still left with so many questions about this mysterious frozen creature, and now you're positioned to defend it from the Empire and the main antagonist so that you might have the opportunity to discover the answers later in the game. My eleven(?)-year-old mind was blown the right fuck away when I got to send all of my characters at the Imperial platoon and the big bad guy himself, all while listening to that awesome Defend the Esper track.

Anyway, my teams:


(apologies for the size, mobile screencapping sucks)

Team #1, aka Team "Fighting the Entirety of the Imperial Mooks" will be fighting the entirety of the Imperial mooks, everything except for the Rider and Kefka, and everyone not named Celes will be at Crit HP. Her role will depend on the encounter: if it's four troopers, she'll Defend since they'll all be dead before HasteX affects them in any significant way, otherwise she'll Runic because the Fidors and Armors will survive at least one hit no matter what, so neutralizing HasteX and Demi will be important, the former moreso than the latter since Demi cannot KO. Edgar's going to make his Bioblaster pay for itself tenfold by using it every battle. He'll instantly take out the four soldier formations, and Celes will Knight Cape Defend tank the Bayonet counters at the end of the fight. If the formation has a Fidor or an Armor, then Sabin will Pummel them into submission. Terra's on Celes healing duty, and she'll throw some boomerangs when she doesn't need to heal, hoping for a Desperation Attack.

Team #2, aka Team "Cheerleader", pretty much serves to grab any troops that slip by Celes and co. (none slipped by). Cyan demolishes single targets with Bushido, and Knight Cape protecting Gau allows him to Rage with near impunity. Otherwise, they're just there to chat with Banon

Team #3, aka Team "StealTreasure Hunt", is Locke, all on his lonesome. Having watched his newfound love interest benchpress an entire squad of Imperial forces, he's decided to one-up her and steal from the same guy two dozen times, and knock her former superior's frilly headpiece off and give it to her as a gift. I don't quite know if I'll ever need the 50% HP boost and holy/poison immunity, but the Black Heart will be there just in case. They also sell for a pretty penny, and I'm planning on picking up a significant amount of stuff in Kolinghen and Jidoor, so I grabbed like 21 or 22 of them for good measure. I also maxed out on Holy Waters in the process, so I should be set for my zombie worries for a long time to come, of not for the rest of the game. Stealing the Tiara off of Kefka was a bit of a slog, but like I said before, a steal victory is far easier than the traditional method.

Dr. Letha, on 28 January 2016 - 04:08 PM, said:

Ha! Gets me every time.

How long does stealing 20 Black Hearts take?

I think ya'll may have just inspired me to try an LLG.

BTB, on 28 January 2016 - 06:18 PM, said:

The Hell Rider instakilled Locke about 1/3 of the encounters with him, Locke's Steal worked maybe 3/4 of the time, and the Black Heart is his rare drop, which is... what, 1/8 of a chance of yielding that instead of Holy Water? Running back, quaffing down a Dried Meat, and doing the encounter was like, 40-50 seconds each time, so uh... assuming I'm doing my statistics math properly–considering I haven't had a math class in years, I'm fucking something up–somewhere between four and five hours.
With 5x speed on? Maybe an hour tops. Probably would've been significantly quicker if you could actually run on the map during the battle.

There are probably more efficient ways of getting money early on, but this way had absolutely zero chance of resetting thanks to how the battle just knocks parties back to Banon... plus I have a special place in my, well, heart for the Black Heart. I made some magic with it on my last run with Sabin and fifteen levels into Terrato. I'm pretty sure he was brushing up on like 5k health by the time I got to the end of KT.

You'll pretty much want one of everything for a LLG just in case you end up needing it down the road, and the Black Heart is no exception. With the way the game handles RNG, if you reset to a save and do the same actions you'll get the same reactions from the game. Makes it really retarded difficult to get rare steals in fights like Rider's.

Three is this many:
X X X

The rng in 1.7 shouldn't behave that way anymore. There was an extra level added that (I think) ties to a frame counter so it should be changing all the time now.

To clarify, does that mean if I savestate in the middle of a battle, the enemies won't always do the same thing if I do the same thing when I load? I saw that in the Readme and I forgot to ask until now.

Unless there's a bug in my implementation, then yes. Entirely possible, it was a bit hacky and during a bit of a muddle in the beta process.

Zozo^{and the journey to Kohlingen and Jidoor I guess}

Fuck Zozo.

With that out of the way, fuck Zozo.

I want to note that I went through three party configurations before I found one that was efficient enough to survive Dadaluma the Fuckbringer. Because all three of them relied on Shadow, this meant that for every attempt, I had to load a save from Narshe and trek to Kohlingen to pick Shadow up, then walk all the way down to Jidoor through wolves and bugs and fucking Air Blast spamming Vultures so I could catch a ride on a chocobo to Zozo, then climb up the stairs tower to Dadaluma.
Fuck Zozo.

Team #1 was Celes, Locke, Cyan, and Shadow. Celes would do her normal Defend Runic combo to keep the rest of the party alive, although Acid rain from the Hunters was pretty much a reset unless I either got extremely lucky or sacrificed a relic slot on everyone to have Ghost Rings on at all times, and I also realized that Vanish, not being a spell, was unable to be Runic'd. Bummer. Shadow, on top of having an incredibly reliable chance to dodge both physicals and magic attacks thanks to his Ninjato blades, was on Smoke Bomb and Water Scroll/Shuriken duty when needed. I cannot state it enough: Shadow has some of the best utility at this point in the game, and it's only going to get better as I progress through the game. Smoke Bomb is incredible for reducing the damage Celes takes, and it turns Shadow into an even more evasive monster than he normally is. Locke's main role consisted of Stealing everything that wasn't physically attached to an enemy, and tossing Phoenix Downs whenever somebody dropped. When I got access to Mug, it only got better from there, because I found out that, when using Healing Shivs to Mug, they deal normal damage to enemies . I don't know if this was already common knowledge, but I still find it incredibly useful; Locke can reliably damage with one command and heal an ally at no cost to himself with another. It's awesome... but that's about all he can do, and compared to Cyan and Shadow his damage isn't too spectacular, even with Switchblades. He's the first character I switch out after getting ravaged by Daddy Looma', and he gets swiftly replaced by Edgar for Team #2, whom is more than capable of healing with Phoenix Downs, and can also deal serious area damage with his sacred Bioblaster, and once I got a Switchblade in my hands, Shadow could easily take the role of Stealing those delicious Healing Shivs, Butterflies, and Mystery Eggs.
Cyan is all about telling individual enemies to fuck right off. Dispatch is the only Bushido he'll have for about 80-85% of the game, but it's all he needs for the time being. Even Gigases get wrecked by it, and anything that isn't named Dadaluma gets seriously wrecked by it. And the big man himself takes substantial damage from it. The thing with Cyan, though, is that he's pretty much the epitome of "one-trick pony" for this run. He can shit damage all over humanoid enemies, but that's it. To make matters worse, even with all of his outrageous damage (for level 3), he cannot outDPS the Regen ticks from Dadaluma's Slim Jim + Jump And Sit In The Air For $70 Turns combo. Thus, he gets replaced by the man I should've had on the team since the first attempt, Sabin.
Poison Claws decimate anything that has the audacity to get within Sabin's postal code, Poison proc or not, and in what I can only assume was forgotten from either a brainfart or a fugue state, Pummel inflicts Sap. Removing Regen and adding Sap to Dadafuckoff over and over is one of the most satisfying things I've done in this playthrough so far, and when Sabin doesn't need to Pummel him into submission, his Poison Claws can deal anywhere between 600-1000 damage to the guy depending on Poison procs and criticals. My only wish is that Desperation attacks could proc casts, but at that point I doubt the procs are really necessary. Between Celes Defending her wounded comrades, Edgar unleashing biological warfare on the city of Zozo and throwing dozens of Phoenix Downs on fallen allies, Sabin showing Dadaluma that Zozo is only big enough for one musclehead, and Shadow Switchblade Stealing/Butterfly Throwing/Ninjato Dodgetankcountering/Interceptor Reprisal-ing for like twenty minutes of fighting on a stairwell, Dadaluma finally has the common courtesy to die.
Fuck Zozo.

I need a drink.



"Now that I have Espers, I can finally gain SP so Locke can learn Life from his Healing Shi–

–ts."

Can I make a request of your posts? Can you split them up into paragraphs please? Walls of text are a bit tough to read.

Yes, Zozo can be quite a pain in the ass. Bio Blaster generally makes quick work of everything there though, but an unlucky Acid Rain can ruin your day. Good call on the Ghost Rings though. Previous versions required No EXP Eggs to consume one of your relic slots, so it would have been much harder to squeeze them in.

Also, it appears you've discovered that you won't have access to very many spells in the game. Celes/Terra will be your main casters (Strago and Relm have very limited use), and there will be spells you can only cast with MP boosting equipment on, so make sure you grab some of those.

Pick your party VERY carefully for the Opera/IMTRF. You will be stuck with them for a long while. I recommend Edgar and Gau (make sure you have every Rage possible). Keep a save before the Opera. Oh, and it helps to fail the Opera at the rats/Ultros once since you'll likely have to do it many times before you succeed. You can then save outside before attempting again and you can skip the scenes and go straight to the countdown.

Dr. Letha, on 29 January 2016 - 09:48 PM, said:

aka Macho Man Randy Savage

Lolwayup, on 30 January 2016 - 01:08 PM, said:

https://www.youtube....h?v=rWrlAmT4jyA

Lolwayup, on 30 January 2016 - 01:08 PM, said:

are we doing a skyrim crossover now?

Huh?

Only the greatest mod of all time.