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

Ugh, Bethesda programming. It pains me.

Rynzer, on 30 January 2016 - 08:10 AM, said:

Apologies, I'm the kind of person who likes to write everything in one big amalgamation of words, but I definitely understand that that can be a bit of a rough read, so I'll work on changing that. Thanks for letting me know!

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I've newfound appreciation for stuff like the Ghost Ring and Rage Belt that grant single element immunities alongside their other effects. Sometimes, that one element is what can determine a reset or victory.

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I had a feeling that the non-mage units would be pretty much gimped magically, but I expected at the very least to be able to cast, like, a single low-cost spell like Fire or Cure. It's a bit of a bummer, but it's nothing I won't be able to work around. I mean, I'll still have Go Fish/Lagomorph/Mysidian Hare for free healing when I get my delicious delicious Setzer :3

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My go-to Vector Squad is usually the New Super Figaro Bros., but I do have the pre-countdown save just in case I want to switch Gau or, god forbid, Cyan, into the party instead.

The biggest points that Sabin and Edgar have going for them are their defense-ignoring options and their ability to hit vital elemental and status weaknesses. Sabin in particular has four elements to choose from between Poison, Holy, Fire, and soon-to-be Water thanks to Claws, and access to the ever-important Sap and (less vital but still useful) Stop debuffs, and Edgar has his Autocrossbow for nice row-independent damage, the Noiseblaster for Confusion, the mighty Bioblaster for Poison, and he'll have a Trident for the IMTRF in due time.

I'll do a write-up of the Opera in a little bit. Fuck Acid Rain.

Pre-Op(era)

Because gaining SP is tied to gaining Exp. (or rather, the ability to gain Exp.), it's time to go to the Veldt! This is the only location where I will be turning Exp. back on, and only for Celes (and Terra/Strago/Relm when I get them) because no one else needs magic due to 2 MP maximums. No levels, no Esper levels, just spells.

It also seems that the Healing Shiv straight-up no longer teaches Life. Non-issue in this run, but that's a damn shame for a normal run, because Shadow and Setzer really like access to Life, even if they both have Rerise. The Shiv is among my favorite weapons in the game, and definitely my most used weapon in a given playthrough :/

That said, I'm skipping teaching Celes Life. Not only will it save her 15 SP that could go to learning other, more useful spells, but Life is strictly inferior to Phoenix Downs for this playthrough. It costs precious MP, takes longer to use, and the extra HP it gives back is honestly detrimental considering Phoenix Downs put characters in Critical HP so they are able to activate a Desperation Attack, and the HP values of everyone are so low that the extra HP won't be significant enough to outweigh the cons of using Life. If I find a strategy that would benefit from using Life over a bird feather, I'll grab it, but otherwise Life is useless.

I grab Bolt, Bolt2, Mute, Slow, and Haste for Celes. Haste is less of a necessity than Slow due to Slim Jims giving Regen and Haste, but it's still a fantastic spell all the same so I pick it up. Bolt2 is less important than Bolt, especially with the exorbitant MP cost relative to Celes' max MP, but it looks like a good panic button for the IMTRF and she can cast it exactly twice with the Magic Cube, and one Tincture will fully restore her no matter what. Slow is incredibly important, Mute will probably have some utility, and she's always got Cure for a quick group heal if needed.

Opera(tion: Save Celes from an Octopus)

Locke, Edgar, Sabin. Locke pretends to be everyone's favorite assassin and dons a Knight Cape and a Black Belt for 84% Evasion, Edgar gears himself up in defensive armor and a Knight Cape/Dragoon Seal, and Sabin replaces one of his Poison Claws with the Hell Claw from Zozo, and wears the Power Glove. I go back and forth with his second relic between the Barrier Cube and a Stat Stick. I mulled over using Ghost Rings for Ultros in case of Acid Rain, but they caused Slim Jims to inflict Sap instead of Regen due to undead status. In hindsight, this battle might've been a good place to use those Black Hearts. Oh well. Fuck Acid Rain all the same.

I always have trouble with the catwalks and avoiding the rats on a normal run, but this time it was pretty brutal, I got caught two-thirds of the way through by three rats that were so close to each other that I didn't even have time to open up the menu between fights. The worst part of the battles were the rats that would constantly run into the battle after a few of them got taken out, and they would do it over and over again, wasting away precious time. I had about 20 seconds left by the time I got to Ultros. Definitely could have gone better.

Ultros, true to form, is difficult until the bulk of his AI is memorized. Unfortunately, he's still a bit dynamic on his choice of attack sometimes, and I had to pretty much hope that he didn't use Acid Rain unless either Edgar was in the air or Sabin was at maximum health. I had Sabin start the battle in Critical so as to proc the Barrier Cube, and with Shell and full HP he could reliably survive Acid Rain. Edgar was only able to survive while Jumping, so Locke was shit outta luck whenever Ultros decided to drop Acid Rain on the group.

Sabin was the king of damage in this battle. Locke's damage was respectable with his knives and Edgar's Jump damage was nothing to scoff at either, but Sabin would deal about 1100 damage per attack, even more if Ultros was facing away from him. Comically, the Hell Claw proc was virtually insignificant thanks to Sabin's wonderfully pitiful magic, clocking in at anywhere from 82-90 damage. I mean, every bit helped, but I couldn't help but laugh.

Tentacle was an instant KO to anyone if it wasn't evaded or otherwise neutralized, Imp Song was a pain in the ass but otherwise manageable since the battle isn't a damage race or anything, and despite the always-present chance of Acid Rain, Ultros was a breather compared to Dadaluma.

I know everyone loves the Opera scene and anyone who says otherwise is a dirty dirty liar, but Ultros is always my favorite part of it. The whole scene starts off comically with Celes flustered over the plan to impersonate an opera singer, then it gets serious when the actual opera begins and she sings her part, and then Ultros adds some tension when he threatens to ruin the whole plan, but finally after fighting up in the catwalks, the party and Ultros begin to improvise on stage and duke it out to a very unique and almost quirky battle theme. It's the cherry on top of the whole arc, in my opinion.

I only wish that said battle theme played for the last two Ultros battles, it really fits him and the somewhat non-serious nature of those battles. If I knew the first thing about editing FF6 I'd make a patch for it

Despite the difficulty of the next dungeon and the three and a half boss battles that wait inside and immediately after, I'm super excited for the Magitek Research Facility. It's probably my favorite dungeon in the WoB, and I love the music for the area. I'm really glad that it gets to play during the random encounters inside, it really adds to the atmosphere of the place. That said, I'm expecting it to be a nightmare to get through at level 3.

Dr. Letha, on 30 January 2016 - 10:39 PM, said:

I hear this suggested a *lot*. I suppose I could actually go ahead and do it.

BTB, on 30 January 2016 - 11:02 PM, said:

That would be a really fantastic thing to do. It's one of those little things that just adds more to the game, y'know? It fits with the guy, and it reminds me a lot of Dr. Lugae's battles from FFIV; they're definitely obstacles, but the different battle music hints at a less serious or even mysterious battle, until the big guns come out and the real fight begins (Lugae's robot form for IV, Chupon for VI).

Ten steps into the Magitek Research Facility and I already hate myself. This is going to be a long dungeon, I can feel it.

Sounds like you're doing pretty well so far, keep it up! I'm usually ready to tear my hair out come 128, and I haven't gotten to play around with LLG Cranes in 1.7 since the loss of Joker Doom. So I just wanted to say good luck, we're all counting on you.

Albrook, Tzen, and Maranda

Rain Man has Acid Rain. Fuck Acid Rain. Thank the good lord BTB for Chocobo stables.

Not much to say otherwise. I grab two Ocean Claws and a Trident, and some new armor for the crew, including a Tiger Mask for Sabin. The 50% Fire resist is pretty nice and works well with his 160 max HP.

The Imperial Magitek Research Facility

I love this place. Fuck this place.

Every formation has at least one enemy capable of oneshotting somebody. I let Edgar take over Celes' role of Knight Cape defending and decked her out in magic boosting gear; she gets two casts of Bolt2 per MP pool, and by god I wanted to make those two casts count. She was able to easily take care of Proto Armors, and Edgar McBioblaster took care of the Defender formation with little trouble. Locke stole Remedies and failed at grabbing a few Stat Hats, but I can get those later up in northern Narshe areas of the overworld.

Shiva and Ifrit weren't too bad as long as they stayed away from their Snowballs and Fireballs respectively. Celes Runic'd everything else away from the party, and the rest wailed on their elemental weaknesses. I do make sure to use my spare SP from the Veldt to teach Celes Ice, Ice2, and Bserk. Ice2 in particular was one of the two MVPs of the next boss battle.

Number 024 can eat a bag of variously assorted dicks. Inherent Regen made this battle ridiculously longer than it needed to be. Thankfully, Slow stymied the Regen ticks a significant amount, and keeping Haste applied to everyone via Slim Jims really skewed the battle into my favor. That said, lacking both Scan and Dispel turned the battle into a giant trial-and-error match to try to find out the bastard's weakness. Fortunately, for whatever reason, he always started out weak to Ice, so I threw in everything I had at him for the first few rounds of Battle before he Wallchanged to something else. Celes was Runicing almost every turn because I did not want to chance a full-party spell, and Sabin was Pummelling whenever he wasn't confused from Overflow. 024 really liked targeting Sabin with it, dunno why.

Edgar spent most of the battle flinging Autocrossbow attacks at 024, raising Locke and Sabin whenever they got hit by a stray attack, or Jumping whenever the guy had a Water weakness. He got to use his Bioblaster a few times, but whenever 024 changed to a poison weakness, he'd spam the everloving shit out of, god help me, Acid Rain. Fuck Acid Rain.

Locke spent most of the battle throwing Slim Jims on freshly revived allies and using his Icebrand whenever 024 went to Ice. The lack of something as potent as either Blitz or Tools really made Locke pretty inferior to the rest of the team, but never let it be said that Locke isn't afraid to unceremoniously whip out the big guns whenever he feels like it:



This killed 024. Locke, you never fail to show your worth to the team :3

Oh and I turned Locke into the green Imperial soldier from South Figaro. It's the only time I ever use any sort of code in pretty much any game. I've always liked the green soldier outfit, so it's just something I've done for years now. Sorry if that leaves a sour taste in anyone's mouth.

Dr. Letha, on 31 January 2016 - 07:22 AM, said:

No worries. It's actually something you can do legitimately in Vanilla, but I believe that with both the South Figaro sequence break and airship glitch patched out, it's impossible now.

Locke can actually output a decent amount of damage with a Power Glove and two Butterflies against 024. I want to say it's around 400-600 damage a turn. I usually use Celes as my brick shithouse character there with the Ribbon (don't think you can get one by this point in 1.7 anymore) and Life Bell. Load her up with Gold gear, back row, and just Runic. She pretty much can't die and can revive the others pretty quickly.

I'm curious to see how you'll fare against 128/Cranes with your setup. Gau was pretty much crucial to me clearing the minecart section.

This is a really fun read. So that's what Ghost Rings are for... I never did get a Black Heart either >__<

Bauglir, on 31 January 2016 - 08:37 AM, said:

Oh, I found a weird glitch in FF6A that the GameFAQs board won't believe; when I got Locke back in the WoR he was in his merchant outfit, even though I didn't skip Celes or anything like that. Not sure how to replicate it since replaying to the Phoenix Cave is a schlep and a half, but yeah. Maybe it was related to the 3rd save slot, or Cyan's Dream. Who would expect that to happen and document their playthrough in gameboy advance?

Rynzer, on 31 January 2016 - 01:21 PM, said:

I've spent the past three hours trying to find a way to get through the minecart section with everyone alive and healthy enough for 128. The Magna Roadies would start casting Ice 2 when alone so they were the top priority at the start. The Roaders hit like a truck on fire with Wheel so I had to resort to Red Bulls just to keep Sabin topped off (how does a wheel rolling on the ground deal damage to a floating unit?), and his Tiger Mask kept the Fire 2 damage down.

Because I lack a screenshot at the moment:
Sabin
-Ocean Claw -Ocean Claw
-Tiger Mask -Cotton Robe
-Barrier Cube -Sprint Shoes

Edgar
-Mythril Kite -Icebrand
-Gold Helm -Mythril Mail
-Life Bell -Reflect Ring

Locke
-Storm Blade -Mythril Kite
-Green Beret -Ninja Gear
-Zephyr Cape -White Cape

128 was a monster and he was most of the reason that the minecart shaft took so long. I tried half a dozen tactics against him, and all of them failed. I couldn't handle all of the attacks and counters at the party. So I decided not to activate the counters.

The arms have Regen.

128 itself doesn't.

Pummel inflicts Sap.

Sap does about 252 damage a tick.

Sabin with his buddies Slim Haste and Jim Regen can take the hits from the arms, but he cannot take more than three hits before his next turn or else he's dead. In addition, if Net hits, Sabin's dead, period. He needs the Regen ticks to survive, and if any of the hits are a critical, Sabin's dead.

Getting this to work took almost two hours with having to go through the mineshaft over and over again, and rolling the dice just perfectly so that Sabin would survive all of this while 128's health slowly drained away. There's probably a better way to take 128 out than this, but I stumbled upon it after going through the boss battle enough times so I decided to just roll with it.

I am going to have an aneurysm over the Cranes. Bolt and Fire, single-target and all, Cannonball, and OHKO physical attacks from either direction. Oh, and Magnitude. And Setzer has the durability of a moist towelette.

But at least there isn't any Acid Rain.

Fuck Acid Rain.

Congrats on getting past 128, that's a huge accomplishment in the LLG. I used a lot of Noiseblaster to keep the Mag Roaders confused, Repo Man rage for Vanish/Step Mine, and Antlion on the 128 fight for the Stop special (arms can be stopped). Net is also reflectable FYI, although you were using your Reflect Ring.

My LLG Cranes strat used to just involve using Joker Doom and forgetting the fight existed because I could never find a legit way past it. I tried a Drill+turtle strat with Edgar one time, but found out the Cranes set Regen (dispelling Sap) when they get hit with their favored element. I then tried to run them out of MP by straight up turtling, but Edgar couldn't survive and it made use of the back row pincer exploit.

I want to say the Cranes' MP was lowered somewhat in 1.7, but without Cyan you aren't going to drain their MP very quickly. As I'm sure you're finding out pretty quickly, physical attacks to the back are the absolute death of you in a LLG. Since you get a full heal before the Cranes fight, you can't set up low HP in hopes of using a desperation attack either. This fight stumped me without Joker Doom, so best of luck.

Dr. Letha, on 31 January 2016 - 02:13 PM, said:

You know Remedy will cure that, right?

Also, I'm sensing I should add more Acid Rain in future updates.

Acid Rain and Step Mine.

Or just skip the middle man and create Acid Mine.

BTB, on 31 January 2016 - 08:58 PM, said:

As long as Acid Rain replaces some other AoE attack (Looking at you, Fireball), I'd welcome the change. Black Heart/Ghost Ring give options for handling that particular AoE at lower levels.

As for the strat, it's a pretty good one though I do have a question about Barrier Cube on Sabin; would he have still been able to survive Firestorm if he'd been wearing Zephyr Cape instead? My old strat required Cyan to wear Reflect Ring/Zephyr Cape and then turtle in the back row after Locke/Edgar used a Slim Jim, but Reflect Ring granting immunity to a character who enters the battle dead but a kibosh to that plan (Cyan couldn't survive the fight before it due to lack of No Exp Egg meaning he'd gain a level); Gold Helm/Armor would give Cyan enough magic defense to survive Firestorm at that point, and enough defense that with Safe he could survive an entire round of attacks. Sabin has notably less MDef available to him though (Even with a higer base MDef, he ends up 15 or so lower than Cyan), so I wasn't sure if Barrier Cube was chosen to avoid the OHKO from Firestorm.

Regardless, good luck with the Cranes. Nightmares, those fuckers.

Synchysi, on 31 January 2016 - 09:20 PM, said:

Synchysi, on 31 January 2016 - 09:20 PM, said:

And then you revive General Leo only to have Kefka show up again to blast him with an Acid Mine and then head back to his tower.

BTB, on 31 January 2016 - 09:30 PM, said:

You ... you monster.

BTB, on 31 January 2016 - 09:30 PM, said:

Like in FF5 Spoof...
Lenna's Dad: "I will now cast the spell to raise the number of party members to 5."
Tzepish: "Whoa, I can't let THAT happen!" *zaps*

(Kefka: "U mad bro?!" *laugh*)

Shoutout to the Odin/Atom Edge summon for doing the cleave animation on both Cranes, but doing literally nothing otherwise. You filthy tease.

BTB, on 31 January 2016 - 08:58 PM, said:

I know Remedy cures Stop, but Sabin's the only one that's alive for most of the battle so Stop is pretty much a game over at that point.

Synchysi, on 31 January 2016 - 09:20 PM, said: