Grinding: it's not just for coffee anymore. Let's Play The 7th Saga!

I always got to about the point that you're at... and stopped playing, for whatever reason. You're seriously tempting me into playing the game to completion. These writeups are great, keep it up!

#6: My Little Saga: Failure is Magic



Welcome back to Let's Play The 7th Saga, where the action heats up as we arrive in Bilthem, kingdom of Doros. How kingdom of Doros is Bilthem?



Pretty freaking kingdom of Doros.

So it's obvious at this point that we need to have a man-to-man with Doros (despite our party containing no actual mans).



Fortunately, the "guards" are happy to point us in his direction (I put "guards" in quotes since it is obvious that they are not guarding anything in the literal sense of the word).



Unfortunately, wouldn't you know it, this castle is also a dungeon.



The gimmick here is INVISIBLE WALLS OF FIRE that pop into view once you're adjacent to them. A keen eye will notice that I'm only a few steps in this screen from where I was in the one previous.

Don't worry; this probably isn't annoying at all.



Also here: the K.Trick, which is the trickiest Trick the game has to offer. It's not as big a step up from the R.Trick as the R.Trick was from the Trick, but it likes to cast VACUUM1, so watch out for that.



Seed watch: The V Seed increases HP. LAVOS will eat it, not because he necessarily needs it more, but because we won't necessarily have Esuna forever.



In the New Enemies department, we have the Flame, who attacks by setting himself on fire then flinging himself at you.

You might have missed that. Let me repeat: he attacks by setting himself on fire then flinging himself at you.

There is naturally a lot of fan speculation that the Flames are related in some way to Wilme, whom we previously respected for lighting his arm on fire then punching people (although in light of this new development, that really doesn't seem so awesome after all). Nothing in the game really leads to this conclusion other than, hey, fire, but it's a conclusion I arrived at independently when I was a kid, so there's something.

I both win and lose to one. We will be fighting them in threes later to fulfill our RDV of Pain.

Death count: 37



Next up is a dude with gigantic snake legs. Now, before you read on, I want you to ask yourself two things:

• How does a dude with gigantic snake legs attack you?
• What do you think this guy is named?

.

.

.

Ready? If you guessed that he kicks you with his gigantic snake legs, you win!



And if you guessed "Griffin," you are certifiably insane! But you win anyway!



Later on, we come across an unusual doorway. Entering this doorway takes us to...



...this bedroom-looking area. Going back through the door takes us to...



...a fireplace? What?

Yes. It makes astoundingly little sense, but it's a quick way out of the dungeon.

Which you don't necessarily want.

So, uh, watch out for that.



Hidden behind a pillar in this dungeon is our next Secret Equipment: the Amulet. This is the best accessory Lejes can equip, although everyone else that isn't Lux or Wilme gets something better, at least in terms of raw defense. The Amulet also grants near-immunity to vacuum spells, which is its unique feature. You probably don't need both this and the Ring unless you're running a two-mage party, and they both sell for a good amount.



Also in this dungeon, a staircase leads to the dungeon. In a subversion of everything we know about fantasy, the dungeon is the only part of the castle that is not swarming with monsters.



You can see a key underneath this table, which should be your cue to push the table aside and pick up the key. Hopefully, you found it, because otherwise, the game is going to pull a fast one on you in a bit.



The Jl Key is used in this very room, after which it will continue to occupy a permanent space in your inventory. SEVENTH SAGAAAAA

Derp no



Sound advice. But since Doros is there, we'll need to overthrow him at some point, so let's say yes instead.



The unnamed prisoner gives us the Star, not to be confused with the Star Rune. It'll be useful some day.



That's rough, buddy.



Miscellaneous level up



At the end of a not-at-all-annoying maze of invisible flame walls, Doros.



Look, guys, if you still had doubts about 7th Saga bosses having the best intro text, Doros is here to rectify that situation. You scoundrel!



The very first thing Doros does is split himself in three. Word on the street is he's completely invincible in his cloned state. Whether that's true or not, you won't beat three Doroses. It just won't happen.

The solution here is obvious given the details I have and haven't skipped over, but I'd like to reiterate that if you didn't grab the Star on the way here, you lose. That's it. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.



The Star unclones Doros, which means that you only have one boss to contend with.



That still doesn't mean you'll win. Doros can TPK us with one shot of his F BALL spell, which means we'll want to leave this for later.

Death count: 38

Since all of our current leads have us six feet under, it's time to roam the overworld in search of new towns. Wandering northeast of Tiffana shows us a new enemy:



This guy has a great animation where he twirls his mace around before smashing your head with it. As with most nonmagical enemies, he's a pushover, although this is a little less true when we fight him in threes. Also: Soidiek.



And we arrive at Polasu, which is having the same kid problem as Tiffana. In other words: booooooring.



Further on, we encounter the Tower of Grime, which is much cleaner than its name would suggest. You might recall that Olvan gains access to the other end of the tower once he reaches Bone -- the tower exists on both continents, separated by a teleporter on top.



More miscellaneous level up



Anyway, the tower is littered with goodies, which is the only reason for anyone to explore it. It is also littered with Mutants, which is the primary reason for anyone to avoid it.



This is the point where Esuna solos the central area of the continent. Never has any character been as awesome as Esuna is here. How awesome am I talking?



TRIPLE SOIDIEKS GO



ANOTHER TRIPLE SOIDIEKS



Esuna vs. The 7th Saga. Esuna wins!



And we reach Padal, a nation of -- yeah, what he said. The previous screenshot reveals the presence of a rune here.

That's right, suckers. I can walk all over this continent.



Context! Finally, we have a reason to save the little kids in Polasu and Tiffana. (No, "because we're heroes" is not a good reason, and if you think that's applicable, you really haven't been keeping up.)

Naturally, I say no.



And here is where I do something colossally stupid and load my save state. See, normally, I would have saved state before picking the dumb dialogue option so that I can show off both responses, but in this case, I hadn't saved since Polasu.



Whee~



So we're back to The Adventures of LAVOS and Esuna: Partners in Grime. Let's be honest: the Seeds are the real draw of this dungeon. Anything else here can be bought or farmed.



Here's that teleporter.



Stepping through takes us back to an older set of monsters, but since we took the boat to Pandam, we actually haven't seen them. These are Mages, who delight in casting F BIRD for multitarget fire damage, casting MPCTCHR to drain your precious resources, and casting REVIVE1 to annoy you.



Seeds!



And then I eat a wipe, courtesy of another Mage threesome.

Death count: 38

I don't bother revisiting the tower at this point: I've cleaned out most of the good stuff and I'm still just as likely to die there.



More level up



Finally, I make it back to Padal so that I can say yes to the good Commander.



From there, it's downhill to our next town. Telaine is another castle town, which means more chests to raid.



I'll take that into consideration, thanks.



More ineffectual guardsmen, hooray!



So the backstory here is that Telaine is a mining town and Belaine is a smithing town. Telaine provides the ore for Belaine to and I can see you nodding off at this point, so the short version is Telaine has no ore and Belaine is mad at them for raising prices. Will there be war???



Just east of Telaine, a cave!



Reminiscent of the dungeon below Patrof, this dungeon is full of Trick chests. Tread lightly.



Of course, it's not always the Tricks that kill you.

Death count: 39



'Nother level



Exiting the dungeon takes you to an island just off the main continent.



The monsters aren't pushovers, so you want to move quickly to avoid dying like me.

Death count: 40

Having eaten enough deaths in that particular dungeon, I head along to Belaine. There are seriously something like a dozen weapon shops here. Half of them just have a single guy trying to sell you a single weapon; of those, you can ignore them all except one:



Actually, you can probably ignore this one, too, since although he's selling a sword that your mages can equip, that's seriously the dumbest idea. Valsu is the only one who should bother.



Belaine is a castle town, too...



...but has chosen to employ K.Tricks instead of guards. Very clever!



Here's that backstory again. I can see your eyes glazing over, so let's get back to ACTION.



Whammo! Esuna has learned BLIZZARD2 and can wipe out entire groups of enemies with it.



Finally, after so many journeyings, we have arrived at Dowaine. You may remember this as the town everyone else gets dropped off at instead of Pandam. I might still be a little bitter about that.



Here in Dowaine lives the world's best treasure hunter, and I'm not kidding about that. For the low, low price of 100G, he'll give you... something! If Wilme is in the lead, he'll tell you that you're too ugly to do business with. Harsh!



This can be a Pearl or Potn 3, which you can sell for 200G for an infinite profit engine.



He can also sell things that are worth much less, but if you have a full stock of what he's selling, you don't need to pay.



And here's Secret Equipment #3: the Cloak of Fire. In addition to being an excellent piece of armor at the time you get it, it also gives a high degree of fire resistance. Of course, we came through Pandam first and bought the best robe there, so this is much less useful now.



Seriously, guys, the best treasure hunter. He may not have a great head for business, but he does have an excellent nose for treasure.

Death Count: 40
Mutant Death Count: 6
Grind Count: 1
Unavailable Apprentices: Kamil, Wilme

Next: Making up for lost time

I played a hacked version of his game about a year ago, one of the difficulty-reducing hacks that restored the stat gains to the Japanese original and down-powered some enemies. (That was also when I learned about the hidden items and a bit more nuance of the battle system--but I never knew about the way targeting worked until your intermission post!) Before that, I'd never beaten the game without a Game Genie.

Watching you makes me believe that the game, as released in NA, could actually be beaten by a human. Keep it up!

Of course it does.

WHYYYYYYY?

The V is for Vitality. When you find them on the ground, the game shows the full name. See also I Seed for Magic (Intelligence).

As for the Griffin... well, what would YOU call it?

Snake Kicker: He What Kicks... with SNAKES

Oh sure, there's probably a text limit to consider, but no... no I would have to insist on the full spelling.

Why didn't I notice this thread before now! 7th Saga is one of my favorite under-appreciated Super Nintendo games, and I applaud you for playing it. I would also like to say that Esuna is my favorite character from the game, and I'm glad you're giving her some time to shine.

Well, according to this site, the Japanese name is シージリア, which would Romanize to something like Shiijiria. I have no idea what that means, but it's a start, right?

These hidden items are driving me insane. There's absolutely no indication that something would be hidden in any of these spots!

Intermission #6: Damage Formulas



Why are physical-only monsters so unthreatening, whereas magic-wielding monsters can absolutely wreck you? There are several reasons for this: for one thing, physicals are predictable and DEFENSE1 is reliable. But another answer comes from the damage formulas used for physical versus magical damage.

The formula for physical damage, when greatly simplified, looks like this:

Damage = TotalAttack - (TotalDefense / 2)

Counterintuitively, the DEFENSE status does not double your defense; instead, it halves the damage dealt. Defend has the same effect. Critical hits double the resulting damage. Monsters can also score critical hits, although they don't have any special animation for them. Defending in the previous round increases your total attack by 50%.

The simplified formula for magical damage looks like this:

Damage = Magic1 - Magic2 + SpellBonus

where Magic1 is the attacker's Magic, Magic2 is the defender's Magic, and SpellBonus is

SpellBonus = (Magic1 / 2 + SpellPower) * (100 - ElementalResistance) / 100

SpellPower is a constant that depends on the spell, while ElementalResistance is either the sum of equipment resistances (for apprentices) or a constant value that varies by monster (for monsters). It's usually 30.

"So what?" you ask, and rightly so. Well, consider this: each point of Guard cancels half a point of physical damage, while each point of Magic cancels a full point of magical damage. Meanwhile, each point of Power adds one point of physical damage, whereas each point of Magic adds up to 1.5 points of magical damage.

In both formulas, the final result is multiplied by a random value between 0.8 and 1.2. We'll be ignoring that today.

Now, let's consider a few scenarios. For each of these, we'll be using 1) a regular, unboosted attack, 2) a defend-attack (available only to apprentices, not monsters), 3) ICE 1 versus a target with 30 resistance, and 4) ICE 2 versus a target with 30 resistance. ICE 1 has 36 SpellPower and ICE 2 has 80 SpellPower.



Scenario #1: Defender and Attacker stats = 30

Regular attack: 15
Defend-attack: 30
ICE 1: 35
ICE 2: 66

Early on, magic has a definite and decisive advantage. Very few apprentices have access to POWER at this point, so magic reigns supreme.



Scenario #2: Defender and Attacker stats = 100

Regular attack: 50
Defend-attack: 100
ICE 1: 60
ICE 2: 91

Around our area of the game, magic stops being competitive with attack damage. POWER is easy to come by, and if you don't have a Rune or spell for it, you'll at least have B Power for boss battles.



Scenario #3: Defender stats = 50, Attacker stats = 100

Regular attack: 75
Defend-attack: 125
ICE 1: 110
ICE 2: 141

Aha! Here's the catch. Reducing our defensive stats by 50 may have increased physical damage by 25, but magic damage went up by 50 points. When there's a clear stat advantage, magic once again becomes a competitive form of attack. Since monsters don't defend-attack and only enemy apprentices will cast POWER, the biggest threat for LAVOS comes from enemy magic. The disparity between physical and magical attacks is exaggerated at our low levels. Monsters that should have low-threat magic are instead dealing critical damage, whereas dedicated spellcasters like our friend the Mutant can down LAVOS in a single ICE 1. Good thing we've got Esuna...



The other takeaway here is that in the long run, the high-tier spells offer little benefit over the level 1 spells. Early on, ICE 2 does nearly twice as much damage as ICE 1, but that doesn't scale. ICE 2 is stuck doing a mere 31 damage more than ICE 1. LASER 3 will probably do about 49 damage more than LASER 1, but it also costs almost seven times as much. Then again, you didn't pick Lux because you wanted MP efficiency.

So if magic is a more serious concern than physical damage, does that mean that the three magical apprentices have it easier overall than the four physical ones?

Well, yes and no. They have better defense versus magic, but (Lejes aside) have low offense when they aren't overleveled.

What, you think it's funny or something to take pictures of a poor poisoned robot?

Though oddly, they give ten times the Gold and Exp as a Cocoon (which they sometimes come paired with). They are pretty sturdy actually. Tougher than anything in the cave east of Telaine (save maybe K. Tricks), but not as murderous as Mutants.

Man, the governments of Ticondera really need to pass some sort of Mutant Control Act quick. Those Mutants are a menace to society!

LAVOS Lane's ever watchful eyes are distracted at last, giving the small elf not only the opportunity to lead your team, but a chance to duck into a nearby phone-booth, allowing Esuna to become Super Busy!

How busy?

SUPER BUSY!

Not that I don't think the Seeds are great, but what about the Illus(trious) Shield? It gives a pretty incredible defense boost to Olvan or Kamil if you grab it while you're still hanging around Bone and Dowaine, doesn't it?

Yes, if you happen to have Kamil or Olvan, go ahead and grab the Illus[trated|ionary] Shield. The monsters in Grime are significantly tougher than those in the surrounding area, though.

Good news, everyone! I'm pretty sure I can put this LP on a steady M-W-F schedule starting this week (wherein every other update is an intermission).

#7: Maintaining Our One Rune Per Update Average



As usual, we start this installment with another death. For the record, there was more than one Mage -- I'm not that pathetic.

Death count: 41



And more levels up! Context: I'm going through the cave east of Telaine that leads to the island.



This time, I don't die immediately upon setting foot on the island, so I'm rewarded with a new town.



Er... sorta. This is the town of Luze, but you only know that because that's how it shows up on the Wind Rune's list of cities. It's pretty abandoned!



It's easy to miss, but there are several little rocks laying around.



Hooray! Crystals of Peace!

...What?

There's no context for these, but they'll be relevant (if not terribly important) later.



Oh hey, a dragon.



Add this to your list of 7th Saga Boss Quotes.

Dragon (yes, that's his name, stop looking at me like that) usually attacks with a fairly weak physical.



LAVOS's physicals are super effective, on the other hand.



The real threat of this fight is F BALL, which does lots of fire damage to both apprentices. If you have the fire cloak, this is a good time to use it.



He'll eventually cast DEFENSE1, mostly to annoy you.



I don't really remember why I didn't bother reviving Esuna, but I didn't, okay?



Dude can petrify you, so if you don't have any Mirrors, maybe you shouldn't be running around with just one party member?



LAVOS is a boss, though.



Now this is really a matter of perspective: there are four other people out there who are on the exact same quest as us (it used to be five, but we killed Kamil). I don't think it's really accurate to say someone "stole" the Sky Rune.

Regardless, it isn't here, and as far as I can tell, there's no way to get to it before someone else does. Heck, I'm pretty sure it even happens in the TAS.

So what happens next is you Wind Rune to every city on the continent, step out to the world map, check if the city is glowing Rune-red, and repeat until you find one that is. When you land on a flashing city, you've either found the Sky Rune or the Commander and his Moon Rune. (The Commander occasionally switches location between Padal and Polasu and may appear elsewhere as well.)



In our case, it's Wilme in Polasu with the Sky Rune.



Oblig. say no screenshot:



Oblig. follow the plot screenshot:

So... remember when I sorta kinda accidentally killed Wilme? You're probably wondering if he's toughened up by now.



The answer is mostly no. His magic is weak and his physicals are weaker (after factoring in Guard Up). However, he does have his usual advantage:



Speed. He's annoyingly hard to hit.



Meanwhile, his FIRE 2 takes away a little over half of my health. I can get away with using the Water Rune for healing, but it just means the battle takes a little while.



Once I connect, though, he goes down in one hit.



Apprentice rewards scale with level. Hooray! These numbers indicate Wilme was level 22, same as LAVOS now. This is pretty typical, and if you've been reading the intermissions, you'll remember that it's an increasingly bad idea to battle apprentices as the game goes on. So can you get the Sky Rune nonviolently?

The answer is "sometimes." Wilme was already hostile, so we had no chance here, but there's a chance that the apprentice with the rune will offer to join. You can accept, which gives you the rune and a new companion, or decline, which leads to a battle. You can even join up with the new apprentice, then give him or her the boot and still keep the Sky Rune. Take that!



So... what does this rune do?



Nice.

The secret real effect of the Sky Rune is to turn VACUUM1 into a panacea of monster-killing fun. If it can be vacuumed, Esuna will be vacuuming it.



This update doesn't have enough death yet. Here's a little more death!

Death count: 43

Next up on our Runeathon will be the Moon Rune. If you'll recall, Commander Whatsisface promised to give it to us if we brought back the missing kids from Serpent's castle.



That's where we've been dying here. Tough, tough enemies, so although the boss isn't as bad as Doros, the two dungeons end up roughly equal in difficulty.



Level up, why not?



By the way, the gate that was closed from outside? Closed from inside, too. How do these gates work?



More vacuum fun times. Don't worry; we'll be turning the tables before long.



In a bit of unnecessary one-off character development, we discover that Serpent went crazy after her child died or got kidnapped or something. Okay, whatever.



Serpent isn't too impressive as far as bosses go. She can cast a couple spells and attack for moderate damage. Nothing to get too excited about.



You could get really unlucky with PETRIFY, but that's about it. The dungeon is more dangerous than the boss, which is pretty much the trend with Enix RPGs.

Woohoo.



What a horrible night to have a curse. I don't know what's going on here, but this is the first time the curse of Serpent was ever mentioned by anyone anywhere, so it's probably either a figure of speech or a mistranslation. Pick one.



Through the door, it's exciting Stockholm syndrome times!

I mean, I get the feeling they wanted to convey that the kids were okay and that Serpent was actually a very good (if misguided) caretaker. But really, it comes off a little creepy. I mean...














Not to belabor the point or anything...



Anyway, as you likely guessed if you've been reading along, the front gate is unlocked now.



Commander Keen has relocated, though, so let's follow.



Oh hi, Olvan.



Haha! Nope!



The Moon Rune casts POWER, which isn't the most exciting effect, but it is a great effect, and will become part of our bread-and-butter battle routine on enemies that we don't VACUUM.

Oh, by the way... those Crystals of Peace?



Are literal crystals of peace. Huh! Who'd have guessed?

Of course, you can always refuse to let the king take a look at them, which, oddly enough...



...causes him to declare war on the neighboring nation.

Okay, rewind. Let's follow this logic train to its final destination.

King: I don't know why the king of Belaine is so unreasonable! Hey, what's that you've got there? Lemme see!
LAVOS: NO.
King: Fine! If you won't let me see your rocks, I'm declaring war!

Now, let's re-examine who's being unreasonable.

...I'm just saying, guys.

Anyway, there's one more Rune on this continent and Doros has it. Let's rematch!



We are now mighty enough to fell two Mutants at the same time. Quake in fear!



You scoundrel!



Looks like magic isn't going to win this battle. (Now, step back a second to Intermission #6 and consider what this means about our relative Magic stats.)



Good ol' LAVOS-style justice only scratches the health bar, but it's still gonna be the way to go here.



F BALL still wrecks us, but at least it's survivable this time around.



Esuna may have bigger numbers on the whole, but LAVOS is the only one capable of dealing any damage here.



And despite her excellent Magic stat (relative to LAVOS, at least), FIRE 2 packs a wallop on her.

Doros can't kill LAVOS in one shot, but VACUUM still works.



And here's the rare Esuna action shot! I still have her attack when there's nothing better to do.



We can pretend she landed the killing blow.



This is a fairly common result of killing a dude.



But not all dudes have Runes.

The Light Rune increases your Magic stat by 40 when used. It's a one-of-a-kind effect and the only Rune whose effects can't be duplicated by any other means. It's mostly good for increasing your defense versus magic. The technical reason for this -- going back to Intermission #6 again for a bit -- is that it only increases your Magic stat when calculating SpellBonus or Magic2. In other words, it will always reduce magic damage by 40, but will only increase magic damage by up to 20. This might be a bug.



On the way to restock our items, who's that?



I didn't actually play this one out, although I totally could have: as that screenshot is intended to indicate, ownership of the Star Rune means ownership of any Lejes battle.



Our intrepid duo returns to the fortune teller in Brush, who tells us we shouldn't go west, young man. But you know the two inviolable rules of RPGdom:

• If someone tells you to do something, you will inevitably have to do it.
• If someone tells you not to do something, you will inevitably have to do it.

So we revisit Brantu, who has finally finished his invention. Drumroll, please...



Uh. Huh.

Well, I think if that's supposed to be some kind of vehicle, it miiight be able to support Esuna.

Mmm... no thanks.



Yeah, cool. Let's look around for any other way of getting there.

Hours later

Okay FINE.



♪♪ Mecha Glider ♪♪



Death count:

No, wait, I think...



Whew! We made it out okay.

Except Brantu.

No, seriously, Brantu has been seen for the last time. Our protagonists are obviously silent on the matter, but the fact that no one else mentions seeing him points towards the fact that Brantu did not make the journey; may he rest in peace.

No! Really? I want a second opinion.



Oh. Okay, then.



Yes, Mom.

Death Count: 42
Grind Count: 1
Unavailable Apprentices: Kamil, Wilme

Next: A new continent! The game punches us in the kidney again!