Insane Difficulty: Solo FFIV - Insane Difficulty

Here's the Paladin's starting gear (+ metagame choices), stats and spell.

Cecil as a Paladin has sky high HP and stamina (defense), above average speed and strength, passable spirit and negligible intelligence. He can use limited white magic, right now only cure is available but that will change. He also has a command called cover, which is useless playing solo.

The Paladin's biggest strength is the absurd equipment pool. He can use swords, holy swords, daggers, bows, staves, shields, axes, and even more importantly every single piece of defensive gear in the game (aside from female only and dark knight only gear). Cecil's a tank, through and through.

The first battle I fight gains Cecil 8 levels, and before leaving Mt Ordeals he reaches lv15 and has learned sight (useless) scan (useless) and cura.

Before the Baron Guards fight, I go to Mist and buy a dancing dagger.



On paper it is weaker than my Sword of Legend, but it has a special ability when used as an item, as seen above. This is stronger than my physicals on most enemies (unless the have decent mdef) so it's the weapon of choice for now. It one shots the Baron Guards, and a few physicals at Yang later it's onto the waterway, stopping briefly to buy and equip a twist headband and kenpogi.

Backrow Dancing Daggers carry me through the enemies in the waterway. I pick up an ancient sword which procs curse, but ultimately do not end up using it. Cecil also learned Teleport at lv19 in here.



like always with solo characters, I kill the left arm first so I can't be paralysed and injure the right to cut the teeh out of it's self destruct. Backrow dancing daggers, easy fight.

Cagnazzo has high magic defense, so it's off to the front row, hacking him up with the sword of legend.



Like with Kain, once he's lost about 4000 HP, toss a rage of zeus to break the barrier, then a spider's silk, hermes sandals and bacchus wine to overcome the endless self healing. Cecil reached lv24 and learned Esuna, completing his spellbook.

It's the usual clean-up time, hourglasses for the awful monsters in Eblan's chests, netting me a sleep sword which procs sleep, and will be the weapon of choice for awhile, pit stop in mythril for a shield, not even bothering with the rest of the set, and a great bow and 30 thunder arrows from Troia, which I won't use until much, much later.

Cecil stripped naked and ran from everything in the magnetic cave, like most characters.



Rubyring to null pig, cast cura after his tornado. form one down.



Dragon's weak to holy, 3 attacks killed it.



This was a nice drop from an ogre on my way out of the cave. I get one in a chest soon ish, but earlier is nice too.

Cecil picked up a firesword, fire shield, and sage's surplice in the Tower of Zot, all of which are useful in some way or another.



I have to slightly take back what I said in the Rosa writeup about bows being garbage, they're actually not bad, but you have to hit a weakness to somewhat negate the accuracy penalty. This fight was a joke like always.



Barbariccia was tougher, but not impossible. With Sword of Legend's 99% accuracy, it's possible to break through the tornado barrier, although damage is quite low as seen here. For this fight, Cecil wore gaia gear from the mage set nulling petrify and saving me quite a few turns- I wish I had thought of this back in the Rosa playthrough. cecil was actually fast enough to toss a spider silk before the boss's barrier went up too- very nice.



Took a long time and tons of hipotions, but eventually I pulled through.

The dolls were beaten by tossing a spider silk, and alternating the order in which to kill them like usual.

Golbez went down to 3 flame sword attacks after Rydia kills herself.

Picked up a black belt and sage's mitre in the dwarf castle. Cecil picked up an icebrand, ice shield, ice armour, and killer bow in Babil, reaching lv36 on the climb to the doctor. Equipped prisoner's wear before the battle.

Fought the first battle by weakening Barnabas, before killing the doctor. Cecil ate a 600 damage self destruct, but that's okay. In the second battle, tossed a spider silk, hermes sandals, and healed up with an x potion before spamming attacks.



I dealt more than enough damage to make laser a survivable move (it's damage is based on the boss' remaining HP total), and actually won the fight without healing at all, prior to the initial few turns. May have wasted a hermes sandals here.

(continued in next post)

Some stuff happens, Cecil gets a worthless Blood sword, an ogrekiller axe from a chest, and then has to fight rubicante.



The ice shield makes Glare more than survivable.



Keep attacking while the capes open, those weak fira counterattacks are nothing. Spam cura while the cape is closed to heal up for the next glare. not a tough fight.

Bought a set of diamond gear from Tomrac (the dwarf town who's name I kept forgetting), and headed over to the eidolon cave to buy an aegis shield and a light robe. Also picked up a yoichi bow from a chest, the all important Rat Tail, and a Defender- using an hourglass to beat the chest monsters. Ignored fighting asura/leviathan, since Cecil cannot summon.

Next it's off to the sylph cave for a couple things. Mage masher from a chest, and the Avenger, guarded by 4 malboros. They are faster than Cecil right now, so I'll need to level up to get that sword.

Making headway in the sealed cave is not possible yet either, because Cecil can only get off 2 attacks on trapdoors before he is instantly killed.



So, it's a different grinding spot then. This little peninsula is notorious for having a bunch of enemies that don't appear anywhere else besides these three steps. It's honestly not the greatest place to level up right now, but there's a method to my madness:



the Gloomwing enemies drop a very crucial item for Cecil not to be some stupid high level to beat the trapdoors:



Lunar curtains, which cast reflect. I need 3 of these for the 3 mandatory door battles in the sealed cave. While I'm grinding for these, I periodically check the malboro battle to see if Cecil goes first yet.



He doesn't, but by changing my strategy I'm able to win this battle. On the backrow with full diamond gear, Cecil can barely survive two physicals after being bad breath'd, giving me time to toss the hourglass and remedy, thus winning the battle. I did this at level 48. I still needed another lunar curtain, Cecil was lv50 by the time I was ready for the sealed cave.




This never gets old.

Here's a video of Cecil fighting the Evil Wall, since I haven't had a video yet this time around, and also didn't bother with Kain:

https://www.youtube....eature=youtu.be

(continued in next post)

Cecil's officially ignoring randoms forever now, in the interest of a non ridiculous level. He gets the Excalibur, and buys some Elixirs from Hummingway, some more stuff happens, then he fights the Archfiends:

https://www.youtube....h?v=rh0WeoqQPv8

The sage's mitre was worn for a very crucial mdef multiplier- it cut the damage from rubicante's firaga and glare from 1200-1600 to a much more manageable 600-900. This fight shows off a lot of different tricks in the Paladin playbook, back and front row, different weapon types, different shields and so forth.

The CPU, like always, isn't worth talking about.

Off to the Lunar Core, picked up the dragon gear and the free protect ring right away, Then it's fighting monsters for cecil's actual ultimate gear. A Behemoth gets you the Crystal Armour.



This was a very nasty encounter for Cecil. I wiped a couple times (maybe could have won using Elixirs, but I need those for Zeromus) before figuring out how to win: equipping all the dragon gear and a protect ring from the backrow, hitting away with weak icebrand strikes on the red (later, excalibur for the blue) and liberal use of Cura. No elixirs were used. Got rewarded with Crystal Gloves, which are worse than the protect ring I already have.



Naturally, I run into pretty much the same encounter for the next trapped chest too. Won this battle with the same strategy, this one gave up the Crystal Shield, which is actually good though. An unguarded white robe follows, which is Cecil's best mdef armour, and an easy battle against a Dark Sage and Dinozombie for the crystal helm, which will also be osbolete pretty soon. Also picked up 20 artemis arrows from chests.

https://www.youtube....h?v=JakXgPzbl18

Here's a video for the Dark Bahamut fight, because when else am I ever gonna talk about this guy? Being a dragon, artemis arrows wreck his face in. Unfortunately, I needed 3 elixirs to win- I may have gotten away with less, had I remembered to get more spider silk before coming into the last dungeon.

Naturally, at this point I leave the dungeon to get 2 more from drops from the undergrounder enemies. I also bought a couple more elixirs from Hummingway with my renewed stash of gil.

Back in the Lunar Core, Cecil fights Lunasaurs. Open the battle with Spider Silk, and attack 6 times and you win- Ragnarok hits 9999 damage on these guys. Not worthy of a screenshot this time around (or, maybe I just forgot to take one).

Here's Cecils final equipment and stats heading into the final battle:




The gear was chosen to maximize mdef- Cecil has a mdef multiplier of 4 with this setup, which is really high. Zeromus doesn't attack physically, so this is probably the ideal setup. The Aegis shield actually boosts mdef more than the crystal shield, BUT with that as my shield the multiplier, which is far more important, was only 3. I could've had a higher physical multiplier if I wore strength gear, but defense is far more important in this fight.

It's a straightforward fight, attack, use elixirs as needed. I pulled off one sneaky maneuver in waiting for the 3rd cycle of pattern 1 to apply slow, using a lunar curtain first. He reflects a flare onto himself, and the bio in the same set of moves, saving me a bit of healing and doing a tiny amount of damage.

Besides that little trick, the fight was a lot of this:



And a lot of that:



With an elixir tossed in every 3rd or 4th attack by Zeromus, depending on the damage done. Note the low damage from Big Bang- Cecil's absurd mdef pulling through. I saw as low as 500 damage from big bang, but did not react fast enough to get a screenshot.

When he switches to meteo before dying, it's so weak that it straight up misses Cecil everytime. I was surprised this happened, I knew his meteo was weak from past playthroughs, but I didn't know the spell could actually miss. I amused myself for a few minutes by watching the boss try to cast meteo over and over again to no avail, before putting him out of his misery. All told, Cecil needed only 6 elixirs to win this last fight.



To summarize, Cecil's a pretty good character overall. His magic is limited, but cura is useful throughout the whole game at least. Great weapon selection, including Ragnarok which is above and beyond the strongest weapon in the game (gba exclusive content not withstanding), only Edge has a better weapon pool I'd say. The biggest strength is the wealth of defensive options, heavy armour for physical intensive battles, caster gear for magic heavy battles, a plethora of access to elemental and status resisting gear... with the right setup, very few things can actually kill Cecil. The only part that had be stumped briefly were those trap doors, but looking at the drop tables the solution was obvious, if tedious due to the needed grinding.

Next time, I'll play Rydia and round out the core 5 party members before moving on.