Nakar

It's about time I got back into the swing of things. After a long hiatus I finally play the game with the cool bits like the Esper Bank and whatnot, and immediately attempt to abuse this to whatever extent the game permits. Also I learn a lot about counters and then start ruthlessly exploiting them. These are vod rips from my Twitch channel, and I'll be streaming off and on when I'm not busy with stuff. As of this first post there should be three videos up, covering everything up until the actual acquisition of Espers. I've picked the IMRF team and leveled them via my painstakingly stupid and tedious method and let's just say Cyan is done taking shit from the Empire at this point. Just freakin' done.

They're patches yes but I don't recall quite where they came from except that they were posted to the ID forum for BNW. Try doing a search for "sprite" or something and see what comes up. If nothing else I can probably repost them. Dragon cleanup, Brown/White/Red. Too lazy to do a Black Heart strategy against White so I just fight him normally. Biggest mistake there was bothering with Carbunkl, not sure why I even thought it'd be a good idea. Other two went pretty smoothly, though Gau ended up doing useless 1/3 moves for most of the battle so the major damage was done by a Red-D-Berserked Celes. Good job taking your first action to Berserk someone on a Vigor build.

Testing @seibaby's new patch to make start of battle ATB more consistent with respect to Speed of characters and enemies. So far it seems about right; my party is not lapping the enemy but characters like Locke, Relm, and Shadow are almost always able to get a turn in before more than one enemy has gone. Relm even gets some uncontested wins with Sketch in the Ancient Castle, something that seemed quite rare before. Of course it does mean Strago and Cyan are consistently among the last to act on the first turn, but that seems like the way it should be. Not like Cyan gives a damn, he and Setzer are effectively immortal so they're gonna get their turns eventually.

Bit of a salty day, aborted an earlier run to start over with a more reasonable progression but still kept complaining about things and then remembering later why the things I complained about worked the way they did. But I did manage full recruitment! So per my rules I can bump the level cap which should make things a lot easier going forward, at least until Kefka's Tower. Lots of things remain: Doom Gaze, Ancient Castle, Cyan's Dream, Hidon, most of the dragons... also looking into making use of EL resets for Locke, Celes, and Mog; I considered it for Cyan but I think I like him better as Stamina for this particular run, especially since I'm about to have no shortage of melee fighters. Will probably hit up Doom Gaze first and foremost as Relm has languished long enough without her true power and he should be trivial now. Half considering Hidon for the Lores and goodies over Doma for goodies and Alexander, but it's a tough call and it might be better to flip that because of Celes. The Ancient Castle will be a one-stop shop for Locke in particular, and after all that the dragons remaining should be easy to deal with, outside of maybe White-D. Assuming all my plans work as they should (they never do), I'll have the means to trash that dragon and snag a shiny Longinus and Crusader. But probably better to take out at least Brown and Blue first, if not Red.

A strategy I thought would work doesn't because either I was lied to or Seraph broke everything (this would not be the first time). Then some other strategies work pretty well, puzzle trolls aside. Also I forget Shadow exists.

There's also a stable near Tzen (WoR), and I think always has been, that I just forgot about entirely. I needed the money anyway, in the end. If the Kusarigama/Morning Star are row-ignoring, the Printme isn't saying so. The editor says they are, so I presume it's a formatting error where "Ignores Row" was supposed to extend all the way down but "Dual Wield" wasn't. Crescent Isle segment. Strago gets dumpstered due to not being able to get SP, he's usually a lot more effective than this. IAF and FC minus Atma. Gau and Edgar just weren't cutting it, though Terra killing herself was my fault. Things work out better for the new team. Atmaweapon through the Falcon. Atma doesn't go as well as my test runs, but isn't much of a problem. I fuck up completely in my Dullahan prep and just wing it. I wanted to restart and set up properly but Dullahan is a boring gatekeeper fight and not interesting enough to do "well" unless you go out of your way to get Heiji's Coin and literally throw money at the problem. Money I didn't have anyhow. Plus I won without needing to reset in the end anyway so meh. From here on out things should get... interesting. In addition to the starting four I picked up Gau and Mog with quick trips to Narshe/Veldt, got Gau's Rages and Mog's Snowman Jazz, and leveled the six characters I have to ~25/24 at the Fanatics' Tower. Yes, really. My main issue here is alternating between streams of appropriate length (at least an hour-ish) and leveling new characters. Level cap will be 25 until such time as I have full recruitment (all 14 characters), but everyone left the WoB at 20/15 or so and will have to catch up in offscreen grinding. Current thought is Relm -> Strago -> Gogo -> Terra all in one sitting. Getting Relm helps her and Setzer and Strago's a free pickup after that. Gogo would give me some tools to manhandle Phunbaba.

Couple new videos since uploading. Opera House through the Imperial Banquet. Some sound issues in the first hour of video #4, everything's fine in #5. Better than fine. Everything's turning up Cyan. See how he laughs as he handles live scorpions! The man is absolutely mad, and indispensable. Oh right next up is Crescent Island, where Strago is the poor man's Cyan until afterward when he gets a bunch of Lores and becomes the other Cyan.

Twitch uploads of my BNW 1.8.5 streams. Watch as I pretend to know something about the game, am often wrong, and am often extremely right. Cyan hard carries and Esper Levels are manipulated to whatever extreme I can manage via selective XP toggling. Will probably end hilariously.

Gau has a fair degree of leeway regardless of build because he has good gearing options and usually has to focus his gear to suit a particular role or even a specific Rage (to cover weaknesses, supplement resistances, whatever). If you have a plan for what he's going to do then gear him appropriately; he isn't a terribly great generalist, though his Stamina-based Rages can do an okay job of that. Even with minimal Stray ELs he can suit up to be tanky and gain +Stamina from gear, which should make him a perfectly competent healer against all but heavy spike damage... which is why it helps to have someone else who CAN heal with him just in case, but they shouldn't be healing as their primary role.

I've never been a fan of Mantra, not because it's weak but because it doesn't heal Sabin. If I'm using Stamina Sabin I'm using him for Chakra, and if I'm doing that then I presumably have some MP hog in the party like Locke or Terra, who can toss out a potent heal fairly easily. I guess it's okay for emergencies but other than that I don't want Sabin not getting healed. Comparatively speaking Magic Edgar fares a bit better. Yeah Mana Battery isn't MT but it can be potent, Edgar's Cure 2 is a reasonable heal with a Magic build that also heals himself, and he retains some decent offense options (breaking rods, Jump with elemental swords, and the Flash to blast randoms). Nothing fantastic but it still feels like more than Stamina Sabin brings to the table.

There is one thing Cyan does better than most characters: Provide effectively infinite item-free out-of-combat healing and revival. He knows Cure, Cure2, and Life, and Empowerer will almost always restore him to full MP if there's any enemy in a random that has MP to steal. Sure, he's too slow and low on Magic to be a battle healer, but outside combat Speed doesn't matter. Plus he's not generally spending his MP in randoms anyway, so he might very well go 2-3 battles before needing to Empowerer. As long as you top him off, he can sustain your group forever. Only Magic Edgar can really do the same thing if he Mana Batteries himself now and again, but Edgar doesn't have Cure or Life, and the Defibrillator doesn't work out of combat. Cyan saves you Dried Meat and Tonics, but perhaps more crucially he saves you Phoenix Downs. And the odds he'll be alive after a fight are... well, pretty high, let's be honest, if anybody in the party is alive after a fight. Slots is really good now that it's skill-based for one thing, meaning Go Fish stretches his MP a looooooooong way (and you'll almost never accidentally fail to fail if you want Go Fish anymore), and Setzer isn't a character who has a low MP pool to begin with. That gives him lots of utility with the MP to spam Rerise/Remedy/Regen or go all out with Bio against a weakness and never be in a position where he can't AoE heal the party or attack the enemy because Slots is free. His Stamina build can use RegenX as a primary heal since his damage sources are not MP dependent (Slots is free, GP Toss doesn't cost MP, and Daryl's Soul makes Fight more efficient), which is basically a full party heal plus constantly reapplying one of the best buffs after Haste. He is a staggeringly efficient healer -- Gau and Mog are too but Go Fish can happen 99.99% of the time instead of 2/3 or 7/16ths of the time and that matters when you need a heal now -- even if he isn't a particularly exciting one. Equipment-wise he's got heavy armor and great shield access plus a +HP/MP Esper available right away which just makes him tanky as hell regardless of build, and gives him some viability as a dual wielder with Daryl's Soul since he isn't going to explode if a hit gets through his evasion like Locke or Shadow might. Less damage sure but there are anti-Human daggers and Dice/Fixed Dice get around the limitations of X-Fight while also ignoring defense. He can also back row with his cards/darts, some of which proc stuff that also gets around X-Fight. Also worth noting that his Speed's not even that bad and he has +Speed equipment options like the Aegis Shield (or Switchblade/Avenger, or Heiji's Coin...) that other slow characters like Strago or Cyan would kill for. Really the main thing about Setzer is he can always contribute. He never runs out of gas, and he can change up his offensive and defensive options to be what the party needs him to be.

I'll record and upload, provided the recordings work. If not I'll probably pull and upload the vods.

Cool. Will he be gone a while? I'll go ahead and just patch if he's going to be away for too much longer as I don't want to delay just because of that.

Will there be a rolled-together version at some point, a la 1.8.5a or whatever? Just wanted to be sure before I start any major undertakings that I don't screw up any patching orders.

Expect streaming of this whenever I get back home or thereabouts, assuming I'm not trying to mess with a FFT mod.