Living off of the Land: FFIV No Shopping Run

fuuuuuuuudge. I felt like I was forgetting something there. I wonder if I can get back there by black chocobo before the next stream.

But he's doing a no-shopping run. He can't buy it, regardless.

It's not for sale.

Are you thinking of the Change Rod and the Gold Hairpin? Because those are findable in Mist, but you have to buy the Dancing Dagger for 5,000 GP at the weapon shop.

Ah, maybe you're right. I just remember that item being the indispensable pickup from Mist.

(Clearly I need to replay FF4)

You guys had me confused, too! I thought I searched everywhere on my return trip to Mist.

Today's installment:



I didn't even think to try using a phoenix down against undead boss guy. I forget if that works in this game.

I can't watch the video because my internet is horrible, but I'm almost certain that you can't kill undead with a Phoenix Down in FFIV.

...At least, I never tried it. Guess I'm due for an FFIV replay soon, too!

I checked the FF wiki and it does not appear to be a thing you can do in this game in any version. I think that exploit started in VI.

Quit taking away my justifications for replaying FFIV!

It was V, in fact. There's a boss that's famously beatable with a Phoenix Down (although other undead bosses have instant death protection, so it only works on the one).

This is kind of off topic, but if you were doing a no-shopping run in a later game, what rule would you make for gil toss? Would you consider that to be off-limits spending?

Oh hell no. I don't really like gil toss that much as an ability, but I wouldn't count that as "shopping." Gotta to something with all that money.

Oh, that reminds me, I was going to make an exception to buy a pass to go into the Troia strip club. I can't remember if there's anything in there other than dancers, though.

Just Gil Farmer, isn't it? Which...is totally and utterly pointless for your purposes. So it's skippable.

The adventure continues!

I recall using the Ancient Sword to curse bosses sometimes (then switch to a stronger weapon), but why use it in a random battle?

I'm pretty sure I completely forgot about the ancient sword as soon as I picked it up.

Here's the thrilling conclusion to the Baigan fight.

oops, forgot to post this thing today:

Catching up on this.

So... do you make it all the way to Zot without ever unequiping Yang's claw? Because I'm pretty sure one fire claw just prevents him from attacking with both hands (and adds fire to his attacks).

For some damn reason Twitch made a shorty episode when it broke up my stream to upload to youtube.



I kept asking in the stream if anyone knew how the claws worked and no one did, so I left it alone until I eventually got a second claw. Did I pretty much screw myself? hahah

I think so, I know in the SNES version you would have. But he's hitting so much harder than Cecil in these videos perhaps not (I thought with the Legend Sword you should be hitting for 200-400 out of the gate without holy weakness).

It's a weird situation, honestly. This FAQ notes that not only do claws not increase Yang's attack strength (except through STR or AGI bonuses), but Yang would ignore them if they did. That, combined with the fact that dual-weilders don't actually hit twice, suggests to me that Yang does as well, more or less, with one claw as with two. Not sure how accuracy works out for him.

"Cocks are up"

Gonna do some streaming here in a few minutes

Nevermind. I played for like 10 minutes and was getting my shit kicked in. I'm too underleveled for not having any armor at this point in the game, so I'm going to need to do some grinding and I'm just not feeling it right now. Maybe tomorrow.

I realize I'm probably the only person watching the videos in this thread rather than watching the streams, but two things I want to add to the conversation in the latest video:

1) Magnetism is pretty much an iron thing, most other metals aren't magnetic. (And who uses nickel and cobalt?)

2) I always figured mithril, with its combination of strength and lightness, was fantasy titanium.

Okay, levels have been grinded (ground?). Gonna try this again around 3 p.m. Eastern over on twitch

I realized later when watching the video that what I was grasping at was iron.

The thing I always found interesting about Final Fantasy is that mithril is always kind of a mid-tier element, often lower than things that should make way worse armor (gold? Diamonds???).

Diamond armor would be totally solid if you could even create it to begin with.

Thanks for hanging out this afternoon, guys!

Here's the last bit of the previous stream



Aren't diamonds kinda brittle? Like they are "hard" but if you strike them they can shatter, pretty sure.

Quite so. A good solid smack and it'd break. So Minecraft is only realistic in having it wear out.

(From Tolkein's descriptions, I always reckoned that mithril would be sort of silvery.)

Diamonds are one of the hardest materials available but as has been mentioned they have several deficiency's as armor. They have several cleave planes which means practically that if you hit them in the right way the diamond will shatter. Secondly as with cars you would want some give to protect from bashing, it's why crumple zones are built into cars as opposed to the 50's era cars which have little to no give. To give a more concrete example of why you need some give such as steel or kevlar have you can try this quick experiment:

Jump off of something fairly low like a sturdy chair or 2-3 ft wall and land with your legs stiff, and then do it again when flexed. You should feel a huge difference in the impact. Same concept applies to the armor.