Insane Difficulty: Garet's playthrough - Insane Difficulty

Yeah, I've tested the waters with Soulcage, and found him to have Haste and a number of defensive buffs as well. Did something stupid though and forgot to level everyone past 25 -- only Zidane is, and he's level 26. His level 5 Death killed everyone but Zidane and Fira left him in the yellow immediately after, so I'll tackle him when everyone reaches level 26.

I'll run the following set-up as a "core" kind of deal. Everyone equipped with Adamant Vests to cut the damage from Soulcage's Fira, even if it does dent my physical defences a little. I'll need to backtrack a bit though, 'cause I only have three in my inventory. Everyone will have Body Temp equipped so I'm immune to his Mustard Bomb, though considering how Quina's version of the attack was changed to deal Fire damage, I'm wondering if the same will be true here. Only time will tell I guess, though even if it does the Adamant Vests will help here too. If it doesn't I'll be covered regardless. In addition I'll keep everyone in the back row to help deal with Leaf Swirl and Shockwave. Vivi will probably run situational item healing in this 'cause Soulcage has reflect too, though I could always give Zidane auto-potion and keep reflect up on him to bounce Bio Soulcage's way. My main damage sources will probably be Garnet's Ramuh boosted with my Extension add-on, with Eiko on healing duty. Or I could do Eiko's Fenrir boosted with both earth-elemental attack up and Boost, with Garnet healing. Not sure yet.

That's the basic strategy at this point at any rate.

A little more of an update this time. I've beaten both Soulcage and Amarant and managed to pick up my second Brigadine for good measure, so all's good on that front.

Soulcage was interesting. Landon turned what is arguably the easiest boss in the vanilla game into a difficult challenge. The strategy I outlined above is what I rolled out with and it served me well for the most part, though it was quite MP intensive and I had a few changes I feel I should share. Zidane took HP + 20% because I didn't feel like backtracking for a fourth Adaman Vest, with my three going to the others. That allowed them to survive Fira, even though it was hitting Zidane without any mitigation bar the HP buff. Garnet was rocking anywhere between 900 and 1100 damage with an Extension-powered Ramuh, with the latter coming from the occasional full-animation sequence. Eiko was healing with Cura. Early in the fight I threw Reflect up on Eiko -- she had reflect null as did Garnet -- and had Vivi bounce Bio onto Soulcage, though he only hit for about 400. When Reflect ran out and I ended up knocking Eiko out I did away with the Reflect strategy and had Garnet go mad with Ramuh, with Vivi throwing out Ethers and Hi-potions as the need arose. He nearly killed me at one point following me killing Eiko, and I caught in a reviving frenzy that only stopped when he used Mustard Bomb, though I managed a comeback. This battle proved to be one of attrition, but it was a good fight. Very fun.

The Amarant boss-fight was one of patience and pre-planning. I opted against putting Zidane in the back row and opted instead for an all-or-nothing offensive strategy. Distract for evasion, Counter-attack to help whittle away his HP pool, and Auto-potion to keep me standing. I gave him the best evasion-boosting gear I could over defensive which, coupled with Distract, meant he rarely actually hit me. When he did though it hurt -- 600+ damage -- which Auto-potion helped to soften. Man eater combined with Free Energy was a potent combination that hit anywhere between 450 and 1000 damage. I'm not sure why it fluctuated so much damage-wise, but when Zidane hit the higher numbers I wasn't complaining. Counter-attack hit him for roughly 300 damage. In hindsight though I wouldn't bother with it. I avoided his attacks so much I rarely got the chance to use it. Very easy fight. I was expecting this to be harder though I found it to be hardly any different from the vanilla fight, though I'll admit that he hits you harder, meaning you do require a strategy in order to beat him. Vanilla you just rock Trance and Meo-Twister his blue-coloured ass.

I've encountered a bug -- at least I assume its a bug -- regarding Amarant though. Mine is level 26 and has 13 of his 19 magic stones permanently filled in, even though he has no auto-abilities equipped. Having access to only 6 magic stones on a guy who I planned to give all the Killer abilities to so he could wreak absolute havoc with Throw more-or-less as soon as I got him was a disappointment. Don't have a clue how I'll fix this, though I may go back to my save outside Maiden Sari and go through the recruitment scene again, to see if it was a one-off kind of deal.

Yeah, never heard of that. It's definitely a bug.

Hart-Hunt, on 01 December 2015 - 02:08 PM, said:

I had steiner at level 14-15 for this i think, bloodsword and BIS armor for this point in the game, had about 1050~ hp if i remember right.
(Leveled on mandragoras /w marcus and dagger because i needed him around this level for the tantarian disc2 fight + disc3 crap, dat paper storm thou..)

I found the fight pretty easy, didnt even trance.
ATB set to fastest to abuse the spellcast times to make up for slow-steiner.
Just had auto-potion & beast/bird killer equipped (counter may have been better in hindsight, dont think i had the stones for it though)
Sold off all my normal potions (only had like 60~ at this point) to get on the high potion auto-potion train (40~ of them stealing is op)
Then entered the fight, i remember been annoyed at rng giving me a bad atb to start, then pretty much held X and won.
I'd get hit for between 500-800 damage then heal 200-250 + 450 hp, i believe i even swung and missed once and still won..
I Front-row'd steiner because then my regen(650-700) is greater than the average of the damage he can deal to me (500-850) and i'd only lose in a worst case (he uses aera twice in a row) scenario, and double damage = half as long battle = less likely that worst case happens.

Garet980, on 13 December 2015 - 12:26 PM, said:

I encountered that bug aswell, its something to do with one of the chars that feeds into amarants level (i believe its vivi /w return magic) having abilities equipped that amarant can learn initially in vanilla but doesnt know initially(or have been modified into different things) in the ID mod (game thinks its equipped in abilities but it isnt).

I "fixed" it by using the inbuilt cheat stuff in the emulator to set him back to X/X magic stones, disabling the cheat, then equipping him perfectly so he was at 0/X stones then saving the game to memory card, restarting the emulator and loading w/o cheats then unequipping his abilities gave me the proper amount back

Later on in the game when i had most of the armors/accessories and i was bored enough to teach people EVERYTHING i equipped amarant with something and broke my magic stones again because he already knew the ability + had it equipped so i was now over max stones.. So you could try looking through your ability giving equipment on amarant and see if he has any "ghost" abilities equipped.

Hopefully that fixes it for you

Hey, Kittens! Yeah, that bird was difficult. I didn't use best-in-slot though, because I was trying to limits it's damage with elemental resistances, but I didn't want to over-level Steiner either. So I ended up throwing a tent its way and letting poison do its trick. I had some Hi-potions myself but nothing near 40. It was more like 10 or so.

As for the bug, I'm assuming the fix you used was a gameshark code? If so would you be able to post the code you used here so I can reset Amarant? If it isn't a code would you mind explaining to me exactly how you go about setting his magic stones back to normal? It'd be greatly appreciated.

Garet980, on 14 December 2015 - 02:13 AM, said:

Good Day Sir, It is a GS code.
Its just a modified Infinite Magic Stones code:
3008B693 0063

Change the 0063 bit to the hex of how many magic stones you should have.
Assuming you still have 19, the code is:
#Give amarant 19 magic stones
3008B693 0013

How i did it: (memories a touch foggy)
1. Unequip all of amarants abilities
2. Enable code
3. Go to amarants abilities page & confirm it says 19/19
4. Disable Code
5. Equip abilities so it becomes 0/19.
6. Save Game at moogle (new slot just incase its corrupt, dont wanna overwrite your progress), completely close & re-open emulator & load from memory card
7. Unequip abilities and confirm its 19/19 then equip as usual and carry on.

A GS code that will set amarants useable stones & max stones to 19 is this:
#Reset Magic Stones to 19 (amarant)
3008B693 0013
3008B69B 0013

Using the above code you can probably skip the reset emulator part and just do steps 1 through 4.

This post has been edited by Kittens: 14 December 2015 - 03:08 AM

Kittens, on 14 December 2015 - 02:38 AM, said:

Kittens, you are a gem! The fix worked like a charm and my Amarant can start throwing Pinwheels and Rising Suns like it's going out of fashion Thanks again for your help!

Garet980, on 14 December 2015 - 02:57 AM, said:

You're welcome, goodluck with your playthrough

Nice.

Had a few unexpected shifts to do in at work, though I've finally found some time to get started on Disc 3. But I'm skipping ahead a little

As soon as I got Amarant in my party my MP expensive solution for killing random battles became far more manageable. Chakra is a bloody Godsend at this point, especially with the increased MP cost of summons. The party I rolled out when I got Amarant consisted of Zidane, Garnet, Vivi and Amarant. Zidane remained using Restore and Soul Blade (I'm leaning towards the Rune Tooth's poison). Garnet's using boosted Ramuh and hot-damn is she pumping out some incredible damage! One hit and most of the things on the Outer Continent are dead or close enough it makes no difference. Vivi thus drops Blizzara and instead uses Blizzard, though its still boosted for extra damage. Garnet's hitting so hard that he finishes them off with Blizzard anyway, no point wasting the MP, and Zidane can endlessly regenerate it with Restore anyway. Amarant's in the back-row and chucking out Chakra on Garnet. When MP isn't an issue he throws Pinwheels which I'm loving.

Thanks again to Kittens for the fix. Amarant wouldn't be wowing me like he is without it.

Got through the Lifa Tree without incident. When I lost Garnet so she could scurry down the trunk by her lonesome, Eiko picked up the main damage hammer. A pair of Germinas Boots and a Bone armlet boosted Fenrir into the same league as Garnet's Ramuh boosted by a lone Extension. Disc 2 went by without a hitch and I got started into Disc 3, grabbing whatever loot between then and Treno. I just fought the Catoblepas under Treno's Knight House and damn, it was easier than I thought it'd be. Zidane's level 28 and he went in with a Silk shirt (thunder resistance), Feather boots (for auto-float), and the Rune Tooth. His abilities included Auto-potion, Distract, Jelly, Gamble Defence, Auto-float and Beast Killer. I hit it with Soul Blade to poison it and then ran with Free Energy. Earthquake was useless against me, as was Devil's Bell. Heave never hit me once and Thundara amounted to little more than 300 damage once Auto-potion and thunder mitigation was taken into account.

Definitely easier than Steiner's birdie-boiler battle

Gonna stake out the auction and see about bringing Freya up to speed ability-wise. I plan to bring her to Oilvert with me.

Freya will be great on Oeilvert.

What I remember being a bitch was Desert Palace without access to Flee. Since I wanted to avoid fighting, this was really intense lol.

I was surprised by how easy the desert palace boss was in comparison to everything else. Ark definitely took a couple tries but I floored the desert boss on my first try without all that much preparation. The random encounters in the Desert Palace were a bit annoying but since you should have Eiko there she can just cure you up and you can toss her an ether every now and then.

Yall could have a little more trouble than me though since it sounds like all of you are around 5 levels lower than me when I was around there.

Valia Pira is always easy. That is, if you bothered to get all the treasures, but I mean, why wouldn't you? They're pretty good!

I could've been around 20-25. Ark was definitely a freakin' nightmare being that low. But nothing Steiner and Freya's Protect/Shell couldn't handle in the end. And the random encounters (Edit: at Desert Palace) could one-shot me depending on the enemies encountered and the attack they chose to use. So Flee was dearly missed. q.q

Laith, on 17 December 2015 - 02:18 PM, said:

I tend to take advantage of the Desert Palace. I normally take Garnet, Vivi and Amarant with Zidane, simply because those are the four I use for endgame. I then use the Desert Palace to power-level the other four and ensure they know every possible ability up until that point. Ark's supposed to be difficult in this mod though, so I'll have to take a more strategic party. I'll probably spend less time in the Desert Palace than I usually do. Some of Landon's random battles are harder than the actual bosses.

Tray1990, on 17 December 2015 - 02:55 PM, said:

I was surprised like that with the Amarant boss fight, because it was really easy in comparison to, say, Soulcage. How hard the random battles will be depends on whether or not Landon has changed the levels of those monsters within the Desert Palace. In the vanilla game each and every one of them have levels divisible by 5, so Quina has a field day if you go a little out of the way to teach it Level 5 Death. I'm not looking forward to Ark one bit though. I usually just wail on him with Amarant throwing Diamond Swords. I'll see when I get there As for my levels. Zidane, Garnet, Vivi and Amarant are level 26-28. Eiko's level 26. I did a bit of solo-battling with Freya outside Dali once you go to Treno to learn Long Reach. She finished at level 24. Steiner's currently at 24 too. Quina I haven't seen since Disc 2. I think s/he was level 23-24 too. Not sure to be honest.

Laith, on 17 December 2015 - 03:32 PM, said:

Valia Pira isn't worrying me. Carbuncle should suffice because all his attacks are magical in nature. The party I seem to be leaning towards for the Desert Palace -- Eiko, Vivi, Amarant and Quina -- all have attacks that do full damage regardless of their row placement, so I'll probably up my defences that way. I'm definitely making greater use of the row system in this mod

Garet980, on 18 December 2015 - 02:19 AM, said:

You can also defeat valia pira by reducing his mp to 0, if im reading this and you're taking quina & eiko then carbuncle + magic hammer ez lyf

Having a bit of trouble remembering whether ark was the problem or if it was just the random encounters game over'ing me before i could get to him..
Pretty sure it was ark himself though but i was fairly low (lvl16-18) and was very close to deciding "f*** it" and savestating my way through.

/e: I dont believe its possible to have done enough CH&C by this point on disc3 to have gotten the "Forbidden Forest" treasure (mountain chocobo required) to earn the High Mage Staff.
So no osmose for vivi to help quina out with 0'ing his mana if you choose that route.

You're right not to be worried though, he's really easy even if you skip the treasures or forget to equip the bloodstone gear.

Kittens, on 18 December 2015 - 06:47 AM, said:

I'm almost positive by that point in the game, you can have every chocograph except the one that makes you gold, and any found in the Sky Garden.

I do know for a fact you can have a mountain chocobo going to Oilvert, because I always grab Freya's super badass spear. I am also pretty sure you can have Osmose by Desert Palace.

Kjata, on 18 December 2015 - 07:59 AM, said:

This. You can get every Chocograph except the Gold Chocobo one. Access to the airship allows you to finish the quest completely, save for Shimmering Island. There where a lot of rumours claiming that early versions of FF9 had the so-called "Golden Chocobo Glitch", which allowed you to skip most of Disc 3. It was touted as a way of cutting down time to make getting the Excalibur II easier, though I'm pretty sure its a hoax. Still, some nice equipment, if you invest the time. My little cousin loved the game so much that he got me close to my first Robe of Lords

So, I'm now in Lindblum, with Alexandria a smoking ruin.

The Steiner and Beatrix battles actually went without a hitch; I was expecting them to be much harder than they actually where. Instead of steam-rolling with Beatrix like she does in the vanilla game I put her in the back-row and played her like she was a fragile mage-type character. With Thunder Gloves boosting the strength of Thunder Slash she was dishing out about 1200 damage from the back row on single targets. That was more-or-less what Garnet and Eiko where hitting on the Outer Continent, and they where seven levels higher.

Steiner didn't even need the Blood Sword. I gave him Level Up, Insomniac, Undead Killer and Ability Up as auto-abilities and equipped him firstly with the Ice Brand -- to finish learning Sleep Sword (28/30) -- and then gave him the Coral Sword so he could start on G Sword. Nothing like the build I was planning -- that involved Cover, Counter, Distract and the Blood Sword. I had Steiner open with Sleep Sword. What I did then depended on Beatrix's limited MP pool. If she had plenty to spare she whacked 'em with Thunder Sword whilst I drunk a tin of cider and marvelled at the damage. If she was low I focused on crippling them with Silence and Darkness as they slept. Made Steiner not having Distract a non-issue whilst making sure the only dangerous skill they had left was Mist, which Steiner was resisting thanks to his Demon Mail and Insomniac. Beatrix fell asleep a few times but the back-row meant she survived any attack aimed at her afterwards. She never fell unconscious once.

As far as damage went Steiner was clocking about 500+ with heavy strike outside Trance, about 350 with G Sword and around 300 with a normal strike. He was the first of my physical attackers to clear 1000 without elemental effects! Beatrix was hitting about 190 from the back-row which rose to nearly 350 in the front. Stock Break was hitting for about 800; never tried Shock or Chlimhazard, too expensive. Her Cura was healing around 800 to them both which was the reason I didn't bother with a defensive set-up for Steiner. Cura, coupled with his Rejuvenation skill, ensured he had HP and MP to spare. The Blood Sword on top of that would have been overkill Steiner certainly seems to be the star of my playthrough thus far. He's the only character I've seen thus far that has been massively useful in every segment of the game he's been playable in.

I did a quick reference on the FF wiki. None of the monsters inside Oeilvert resists Sleep, so I think Steiner's gonna have a field day with Sleep Sword That aside I can a get a cheap-man's mighty wall going by combining his skills with Freya. I don't think anything on that continent resists Sleep either. For once I'll be fit to shut down the mobs before they try to eat me!

Edit: I'm gonna try Distract on everyone who can have it, Zidane's Soul Blade knocking out Darkness, and Freya's Luna to berserk the enemy. Force them into using physical attacks whilst blind. Steiner's protect just encase with Reis Wind up and Garnet on standby with Healer.

Update:

I'm past all the story-related mumbo-jumbo after Alexandria and grabbed the boat. Now let the exploration begin > When I was catching frogs -- I'm on 44 which is one froggy away from a set of Battle Boots -- I encountered a Whale Zombie by accident on one of the islands when I was returning to the boat. A Phoenix Down followed by Quina's Eat netted me Level 5 Death so hopefully that means the Desert Palace will be a fragging cake-walk now. I've also just upgraded my Chocobo to his red paint-job. I'll take the Hot and Cold quest as far as I possibly can before progressing in the story. I also used my red mountain-climber so I could re-visit Treno's auction house. Promist Ring, Thieves Gloves (YEHAA!), and an extra Anklet are all lovely additions to my growing add-on collection. My little cousin's also been kind enough to grind Hot and Cold for me in the Lagoon. I'm now a Protect Ring up that I wasn't before (decided against the Robe of Lords). I wasn't joking when I said he really likes that mini-game.

Anyways, my next update will likely be after the holidays. Hope all you guys have a very merry Christmas

Aw damn, after holidays. ;-;

I get excited with updates here.

I get it though, most of the games I'm playing will come to a pause because of holidays.

Have a good time!