Blame yourself or God! Let's Play Final Fantasy Tactics!

Beowulf is a character I've never really been able to "get". I mean, I understand what makes him so great, but... well, and I was thinking about this just a few hours ago, but it's really a shame that the game waits until Chapter 4 to start giving you loads of new blood to work with. Going into Riovanes I've pretty much selected my characters for the rest of the game and their main/sub jobs.

I picked this up again, and blew through to Ch. 3 over a couple of days (or 9 hours playtime), trying not to cheese despite the game giving ample opportunities.

I... uh... lost the Grog Hill fight. dubya tee eff.

I caved and cheesed it with Auto-Potion with Weigraf, or at least I tried to. I'm using Time Mage/Black Mage Ramza. The joke ended up being on me though, since depending on my equipment he was one-shotting me with Lightning Stab anyway.

This particular play has revealed several things to me: 1) Ramza makes an awesome mage, 2) A juiced up Geomancer is a thing of complete and utter beauty, 3) Archers are actually pretty awesome once you learn to live with the fact that guns are generally more useful, and 4) Ninja with Reflexes and a cape is good times.

Welcome back! This update will be a short one, which is probably okay since sometimes there are so few of those...

Our path to Zeltennia Castle is going to take us through a few new maps. The first one is really just a filler battle, a
map to let the player make some adjustments before diving into the meat of Chapter 4. I'm not sure if I mentioned it
before, but this chapter is the largest by far in the game, even excluding the side quests! Whereas the previous
chapters were limited to about ten fights each, Chapter 4 has about twenty... and then you add the optional stuff like
the Beowulf sidequest we went on last time!

Well, let's hope it doesn't take us another year to finish this LP. I've got a collaborator for my next LP who is probably
chomping on the bit for me to finish...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

(Scene: One of Goltana's units stands guard, barring
Ramza entry to Bervenia. With his status as a heretic,
Ramza has no choice but to fight...)

(Run Past Through the Plains)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Oracle "Two Hands" Ramza continues to impress. Junk sadly walks into a strong blow from a Lancer.

This map faces you off against a solid group of heavy hitters (Lancers and a Knight) paired with a few Wizards. At this
point in the game, you can expect Tier 3 spells (that would be Ice 3 and its ilk) to start being thrown around by enemy
wizards. The PA heavies themselves aren't so bad since they can only whack one unit at a time, but their shields are
going to make hitting them annoying. As always, take out the Wizards first, then turn your attention to the Lancers.

Jump isn't something you'll likely have the worry about given the uneven terrain on this map (Lancers will have their
skills likely sunk into low range/height skills), and the Archer will be unspectacular against you (but watch out, you
don't want him tagging a charging unit). Between the Lancers and the Wizards, it's likely that someone is going to take
a dirt nap, so make sure you're still bringing someone who can revive. If it hasn't become obvious in it's important,
Speed is a good thing! Your units with a Speed of 9 will go before the enemy, so try and take advantage of that!




By this time your army is probably pretty well rounded, so bust out the moves that the enemy lacks. Haste (via Time
Mages), Protect/Shell (via Samurai), Golem, etc. are all great on this map. Germanis Boots are a solid choice on this
map, but mantles are another solid choice. They won't let you evade one of the Lancers jumping on you (Jump is
unavoidable), but all it'll take is one or two evades to ensure your victory.

Remember that outright killing the enemies is unnecessary early on; a critically injured unit will run for a corner while it
still has friends to carry on the fight! Use this to your advantage against the Lancers and Knight, since their HP is
tough to burn through in a single blow (unless your a Ninja of course).

Poor Junk. I had to revive him a few times, after he caught a Fire 4 while I wasn't paying attention. While Sullivan's
attack spell was less than impressive, his Sleep spell managed to take out two units.

... and that's the fight! Sorry, but this isn't what you'd call an interesting fight! So let's talk about something that is
interesting: Summoners!



Summoner Advance Tactics

In the world of Final Fantasy Tactics, Summoners are the tactical nukes! Experimenting with them, even with the
lowest powered summons (Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh) shows off how versatile they are. The fact that Summon Magic often
deals big damage is almost secondary to their large area of effect and inability to hit your own party members! If Black
Magic is a surgical knife, Summon Magic is a slab of rock. A slab of rock you're immune to.

Summon Magic's biggest drawback is its MP cost; even the most basic summon spells cost a whopping 24 MP. While
this isn't an issue late in the game where your combined levels have likely bridged the gap between armour like Holy
Miter (+20 MP, +1 MA) and Golden Hairpin (+50 MP), early on you can leave your Summoner sitting around waiting for a
crystal or Ether, having expended all your arcane energy on Golems. On the other hand, something is going terribly
wrong if you need to cast more than a few Shivas...

Summoners themselves are basically weaker Wizards with the exception that they have more MP. Well, that isn't
entirely true, since they get a few healing and utility skills as well, but you're mostly in this class to summon giant
monsters on your enemy. Their MA bonus is pretty good, and while they have a Speed penalty (-10%) this can actually
be great for catching several enemy units off guard during the first turn (it can suck while trying to protect your units
with Golem however). I would recommend grabbing the Summon Magic you want and switching to a different class,
such as Wizard (for the MA) or Time Mage (for Haste). given the redundancy of having multiple summons that cost 40+
MP.

One neat trick that Summoners can do is to target their big summons on one of your own units who will be moving
before the skill finishes. You can then move the unit into the midst of a bunch of enemies, effectively increasing the
range of the spell, and without an danger of damaging your own unit! Use the turn order list (as always, accessed by
pushing 'right' next to most skills) to pick a good target, and make sure the enemies you're looking to hit won't be
moving until your spell goes off.

I'm going to skip going into any big discussion about equipment or skill selection (just see the Advance Wizard Tactics
guide; it would be more or less a repeat), because I'd rather talk about something really interesting your can do in Final
Fantasy Tactics: you can learn magic from other spell casters!



Learning Skills without Spending JP

There is a small list of skills that a class can learn without spending JP, drawn from the following list (I will explain the
percentage; the class associated with the skill should be pretty obvious):

Cure 4 (40%, Priest)
Protect 2 (10%, Priest)
Shell 2 (10%, Priest)

Fire 4 (30%, Wizard)
Ice 4 (30%, Wizard)
Bolt 4 (30%, Wizard)

Haste 2 (20%, Time Mage)
Slow 2 (20%, Time Mage)

Bahamut (20%, Summoner)
Odin (20%, Summoner)
Leviathan (40%, Summoner)
Salamander (30%, Summoner)
Lich (30%, Summoner)
Cyclops (20%, Summoner)

A unit that is trying to learn a particular spell must meet the following conditions:

1. It must be in the class that the spell is from. So to learn Haste 2, you need to be in the Time Mage class. Being
   in the original class is not important for the unit CASTING the spell, only the unit RECEIVING it.
2. The spell must succeed, i.e. deal damage or give you the status effect. Dodging or negating the attack prevents
   you from learning it. It must not kill the unit that it hits however!
3. If the spell hits you successfully and doesn't kill the unit, your chance to learn it is listed above. Astute/neurotic
   readers will notice these percentages are identical to the chance to learn these skills from crystals.

If you're successful, you'll see their portrait mysteriously pop up in the bottom left corner for no particular reason. This
happens very briefly, but it's pretty noticeable since the game never does it otherwise. You can then check their list of
known skills to make sure they were taught it, in case you think you missed it.

Given that all of these spells listed above range from pricey to ridiculously expensive, being able to 'teach' them to your
own units is a handy way to save you quite a bit of JP. Now, please realize that learning them this way isn't THAT time
efficient, unless you're lucky and get the spell 'transferred' in only a few attempts. One time I tried to teach Ramza Fire
4, and it took a good two dozen attempts for him to learn it! Granted, all that JP he learned in the meantime could then
be spent on other skills.

Learning the Priest, Wizard, and Time Mage skills from one of your own units might be time consuming (bring plenty of
MP restoration abilities) but all that takes is patience. Learning Summon Magic however, that's tricky.

Since Summon spells don't effect your own units, it's impossible to teach a skill like Salamander by casting it on
yourself. In addition, enemy units are rarely generated with enough JP to learn a skill like Lich (and certainly not Odin),
so you can't count on them being generated with those skills. Trying to learn them from your own summoners who have
been charmed is novel, but would likely be incredibly hard to pull off, requiring you fight an enemy Thief of the opposite
gender, who knows Steal Heart, and a lot of luck.

Still, there's nothing stopping you from learning it from their corpses!



Getting Enemy Summoners to teach you Magic, Posthumously

While you'll never encounter an enemy Summoner who knows Leviathan, there is nothing in the game stopping them
from learning magic that is cast on them, just like your own units. From there, you can take the crystal off their
corpse! The following is recommended/required to pull this neat trick off:

1. A reliable source of healing both HP and MP. Summon spells hurt and they're expensive! A Monk's Chakra is
   probably the best skill you can use, since it doesn't cost anything (uneven terrain might hurt it's effectiveness
   however).
2. A way to survive the Summon spells, from both you and the enemy. Shell works, but reducing Faith via a
   Mediator's Talk Skill is another good option to use, particularly against the enemy Summoner.
3. An enemy Summoner. Perhaps obvious, but they're not exactly common!

Summoners can be found on the following maps, generated inside of the random battles that can take place there. The
cardinal direction is listed afterwords; this means to approach the map from that direction (I'll try and list which area to
come from to potentially trigger the fight).

*Note: Not all of these locations have been opened up to us yet, but there shouldn't be any major spoilers below.
Major thanks to the Goryus's FFT Battle Guide for all of this information below.*

* Fovoham Plains (West entrance from Fort Zeakden)
Dolbodar Swamp (East entrance from Limberry Castle)
Sweegy Woods (West entrance from Magic City Garliand, RARE BATTLE)
Zeklaus Desert (North entrance from Bervenia Volcano, East entrance from Goland Coal City)
Zigolis Swamp (East entrance from Lionel Castle
Yuguo Woods (West entrance from Riovanes Castle)
Grog Hill (West entrance from Yardow Fort City)
* Barius Valley (East entrance from Warjillis Trade City)
Ararguay Woods (West entrance from Dorter Trade City)
* Finath River (West entrance from Bervenia Free City)
Germinas Peak (North entrance from Zarghidas Trade City)
Bed Desert (North entrance from Bervenia Free City, RARE BATTLE)
Poeskas Lake (North entrance from Germinas Peak)
Mandalia Plains (North entrance from Igros Castle)

There's a certain way that enemies are generated on each map, making Fovoham Plains, Barius Valley, and Finath River
the best choices as I can figure for encountering an enemy Summoner. This doesn't mean that you'll always encounter
one; the game can generate a different unit, as well as simply not put the summoner in at all! But again, these are
likely the best maps you can find. It took me about six attempts for example, to encounter a Summoner in Fovoham
Plains.

Once you find one, do the following:

1. Leave at least one other enemy unit alive! You need to loot the Summoner's crystal after all.
2. Reduce the enemy's Faith/reduce the caster's faith low enough that the summoner can SURVIVE the summon(s)
   being thrown at them.
3. Cross your fingers and hope they learn it. Success rates generally hover around 30%; you know if you're
   successful because you'll see their portrait pop up in the bottom left corner for no particular reason. This is the
   signal that they've learned the skill.
4. Repeat with as many summons as you have the patience for it to learn; you can (potentially) learn them all from
   the resulting crystal.
5. Hope the resulting crystal contains one or more of the summons you taught it!

Wait, if the enemy can learn YOUR summons spells, can't you learn the spells you teach them... back?

Well, theoretically yes. Once a unit learns a skill, it's there to use immediately. For example, if you teach one of your
own Wizards Fire 4 from another one of your units with the skill, they can start setting forests ablaze with their newly
acquired skill as soon as your unit gets a turn again.

However, in all the testing I've done, I just can't seem to get the enemy to use any of the Summon skills I taught it! I
literally sat there for an hour, having taught it Bahamut, Odin, and Salamander, waiting for it to maybe choose to use
one of those skills (backed from a Monk keeping their MP Chakra-fueled) instead of the ones it knew (Shiva, Titan and
Sylph if you're curious).

It never did.

It could have been bad luck, it could have been some weird AI quirk, but mostly it was a waste of time. You could get
the JP from those summons twice over. Also, consider that there is much more preparation needed! I think if you try it
yourself, that teaching an enemy Summoner skills is difficult enough! No need to add a second step to an already
somewhat inefficient process...



And that's the fight! I'm not too sure what the future of these 'advance' guides are... their utility kind of rests on a
curve. Once you've done a few it becomes really hard to justify others! I wanted to talk about this neat "skill learning"
thing since I started the LP however. I think it's hopefully where the LP will go, exploring some of the neater quirks of
the game. We'll see!

I mentioned it at the beginning, but today marks 365 days of this LP. It's been quite a year! Here's hoping it doesn't
take another one to finish!

The firings of many of our special characters will continue in a special update to be posted later in the week.

The next fight is one of my favorites! See you next time!

Bonus Money: 18,600 Gil
War Trophies: 3,000 Gil, Diamond Armor

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Bar Proposition Treasure 2

I would talk about this item more except I kind of hate FF7's ending. Oh, spoiler.



This marionette is based off one of Dr.Lugae's forms in Final Fantasy 4, and he's a cool boss even if he's kind of a wimp.



Nothing out of the oridinary here to my knowledge; it could be a reference to a character I can't think of at the
moment, but no one really comes to mind as a pre-FFT smoker who would use something like this.



Nothing comes to mind here as a past reference either, although Samurai in Final Fantasy 5 can toss coins to damage
enemies.



A companion to Adult Bread, I suppose.



With White, Black, and Blue Materia, we've now got the entire 'set' of them that appear in this game. Red Materia was
used in FF7 to summon monsters such as Ramuh and Bahamut (we can skip the middle man in this game of course).



This novel (assumingly "Magic-Fiction?") tells the story of this guy named Mesa, who is glossed over a lot in the original
release. Mesa is mentioned in a few places, but essentially Mesa was known as the "Hero-King" who helped save the
world after some great disaster that ruined a lot of the technology and killed many of the non-human races (such as
the Moogles).

For reference, the Ivalice timeline places Final Fantasy XII before Tactics, so whatever happened ruined that 100+
hours of hard work you spent playing the game. Thanks for ruining my FFXII experience nine years before I had a
chance to play it, game.



Most people will probably assume that the diary is talking about the character Setzer from FFVI (although his squeeze
in that game is named Darryl), but some research indicates it's actually talking about a dude named Tango.



No detectable reference that I know of, but this, the M-Fiction Novel, the Diary of Nanai, and the Wyuvle book all were
mini-games that appeared in the original FFT game. The games were all cut out of the release here, but apparently
taught the player a little about the history of Ivalice.



This is an artifact? I've got like, two or three in my bag.



I'll pretend it's a FF7 reference since there are few of those.



THE MAN's weapon of choice, Exaclipar is of course, a weak immitation of Excalibur, which history apparently gave to
Orlandu. Lucky dog.



I'm not sure if this was necessarily translated incorrectly (WotL calls it by the same name) but it is obviously a
reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion.



This is a weather phenomenon. You can see some in action here.

I started playing this game again last friday, that's the second playthrough this LP has inspired.

We are now at exactly the same place in the game, I died last night trying to steal a Defender.

This...

This is amazing.

Hopefully you'll have tips when the time comes try and goad Celia and Lede or an Ultima Demon to cast Ultima on Squire Ramza. I've never been able to pull that off, and they seem to actively avoid targeting Ramza if they even bother to use it at all.

And surviving what'shisface casting Zodiac.

It still baffles me that for all the work it takes to learn it, Ultima is about as useful as Throw Stone. (And not even as useful as Throw Stone was back in chapter one.)

I think this highlights the main reason I like FFT more than other TRPGs I've played, including FFTA: time, which is a large factor in pretty much every aspect of life - but often overlooked in games. It's a great tactical element.

It's also a great way to break the game fifty ways from Sunday.

It doesn't really get any more broken than Calculators. I did the next battle with Jessica only knowing CT, 5, and spending pretty much the entire battle using Haste on herself, and I'm still thinking to myself "my god, how did they not see how ridiculous this is?"

- Eddie

I always assumed it was intentional. Since the game is very much 'Final Fantasy: Tactics Ogre' and by that time FFV, FFVI and FFVII had all established that the ability to break the game in half is part of the series (and, really, part of the fun).

They did have the sense to ban Math Skill in the multiplayer battles on the PSP, at least.

Quick question I'm wondering as I work on the next update: would anyone find a list of available weapons/armour/etc. useful? I mean a list that one could use to compare weapons and such.

- Eddie

yes. more information is always better.

YES.

Absolutely agree with this.

Welcome back!

Maintenance is a rather lackluster skill (it's not often you'll get a weapon or piece of armor stolen or broken?) but this is
a battle where it's recommended. We'll see why soon; if you don't have it for your characters, don't worry too much
about it.

Oh, and bring someone with Steal skill, particularly Steal Weapon and Steal Accessory. An unit that can put enemies to
Sleep is useful too!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Bervenia Free City

(Scene: As Ramza tries to pass through on his way to
meet with Delita, a cloaked women stops his journey. It
appears Vormav had more than one child...)

(Officer Cadet)

Meliadoul: You're denying it!?



Meliadoul: I'm going to kill you, not for the High Priest, but
for my brother!!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Before we begin: this fight plays a speed up version of the "Officer Cadet" theme linked above. This version of the song
doesn't appear on the FFT Soundtrack I've been linking to. You can find a decent sounding version playing in this video
here although there isn't much I can do about the sound effects...

OK, back to the ol' enemy unit check. Let's see:

Ninja to kick your ass? Check.
Summoners to kick your ass? Check.



Special character, with rare sword, rare accessory, and ass-kicking special ability?

Check.

Okay, honestly this fight isn't that difficult, despite everything that could go wrong. While Summoners are still powerful
foes, and the Ninja is certainly dangerous, you're really reaching a point in the game where the game really needs to
throw something a bit overwhelming to really threaten you. Dealing with the Summoners and Ninjas are a matter of
spreading out; the wildly uneven terrain will allow you to be a bit generous with your units' positioning. Protect and
Shell are very valuable. The enemy units have relatively poor HP, so big effects (Two Swords, your own Summons) can
likely one shot many of the enemy units. Phoenix Downs are as valuable as always. As a last resort, you can always
simply ignore Meliadoul's minions and focus on taking her down quickly, since getting her to critical HP status ends the
fight.

Let's quickly talk about those items Meliadoul is carrying.

A Defender is likely the first Knight Sword you'll have come across. Unlike regular swords, Knight Swords can only be
used by Knights (and several special characters, such as Meliadoul here). Knight Swords have very high Weapon Power;
this Defender's is a 16, compared to an Ice Brand, which has a WP of 13. More perspective: The Ice Brand is one of the
strongest Swords in the game, while the Defender is the [i]weakest[i] Knight Sword. Of course, the damage a Knight
Sword deals is affected by the unit's Brave value, so for weak Brave units an Ice Brand can actually be stronger (and
with the occasional bonus Ice 2 effect). The Defender is also somewhat unique in that it has a very high Weapon Guard
value of 60, the highest in the game (Of course, Blade Grasp is usually better)!



The Chantage meanwhile is perfume, which are powerful female-only accessories. In fact, Chantages are possibly
the strongest item in the entire dang game. Perfumes impart two semi-permanent buffs to your character. There
are four different perfumes in the game, ranging from crappy (Auto-Float, Auto-Reflect) to awesome (Auto-Haste,
Initial-Transparent) to well, Chantages.

Auto-Regen is the first effect of a Chantage, which is completely superfluous. You see, the second ability a Chantage
imparts is Auto-Reraise, which prevents your character from dying except in two status ailment cases: Undead (which
prevents the Reraise effect) and Petrify, which gets around Dead status entirely. Otherwise, your character will always
keep coming back to life with 10% of their HP over and over and over again.

Now, Reraise doesn't take effect immediately (it occurs the next time the unit's CT gets to 100), so you can't just slap
a Chantage on someone like Sissie, send her to Grog Hill rare monk battle, and expect to see her get up again and
again, killing all the Monks slowly but surely. The game will check and see all your characters (that is, the one) dead
(even temporarily), and you'll be reloading a save file.

Of course, if you could get two Chantages...

But heck. Semi-immortality is still ridiculous. Getting a Chantage otherwise is somewhat difficult, requiring you to poach
Porkys (the second tier Uribos) who don't naturally show up in many places, particularly this early.



Back to the Maintenance thing: Meliadoul's skill set allows her to break weapons, armor, and accessories with 100%
certainty, and dealing 128 damage (due to her PA and WP) before Zodiac Compatibility, critical hits, and all that
business are calculated. Luckily, the only skill she'll know is Shellbust Stab, which breaks all that lovely +2 PA and MA
armour you're probably wearing. Oops.

Luckily, Meliadoul's Mighty Sword skills have the following quirks/weaknesses:

• Meliadoul must be using a Sword or Knight Sword to use them, just like Agrais and Beowulf need a sword to use
  theirs.
• The damage Mighty Sword skills do is applied before armour is broken. This means that it will subtract the damage
  from your current HP total, and then reduce your Max HP appropriately.
• Mighty Sword will miss if the skill is trying to hit an item the target unit does not possess. This means that
  Meliadoul can't use the same skill successfully on a unit twice, barring that unit using Equip Change to re-equip
  some lost armour.
• Because Mighty Sword requires the unit to possess armour/weapons/accessories, it won't work at all against
  Monsters. This isn't really a big endorsement to bring monsters into this battle; they'll still get ripped up by the
  other units.

Meliadoul herself is otherwise unremarkable, and vulnerable to most status effects. Sleep is a very good one to use on
her, both taking her unit out of commission and making it easier to steal her equipment from her!

I decided to be cheeky in this fight and keep Ramza and Tabitha back, and let my other three units take care of the
enemy. Ramza I didn't want gaining much experience, which is why he stayed back. Tabitha is still slow as heck, and
can really only cast Haste on herself via her meager Calculator skills (occasionally she's able to Calculate some Haste
onto some of her allies). She of course buffs Golem.

The game plan for Junk, Sissie, and Jean (all equipped with Maintenance) is simple: use their overwhelming power to
take units out one at a time. Junk can effectively ignore the Summoners (not shown: him taking a mere 11 damage
from an enemy Shiva), but the Archers and Meliadoul eventually wear him down. His Speed Save and the fact that him
and Sissie can take each of these units out in a single Attack action mean that inevitability is on our side.

I like to think that the second shot above is Sissie raising her arms in the air and commanding Junk to rise. In addition,
she creates some visual emulator issues!



Jean takes the time to ask Meliadoul to reduce her Brave. Since Knight Swords are tied to Brave, he's effectively
lopping off the damage she can deal significantly. This has no effect on her Mighty Sword, but since she doesn't have
anyone she can target with it, her only useful action is to try and cut us down directly.

Here's a visual shot of the magical gun that Jean has. I mentioned it before but magical guns like this Blaze Gun are
awesome. A unit with a high enough Faith can easily deal 200 damage at a range of 8 with these babies. Of course,
this map is quite poor to use guns on, given the terrain.

If this was an OctoPrime LP he'd be saying something like ice to meet you! Probably.

One thing I wanted to talk about a little bit is the world map, mostly as a refresher and some small insight into the
world of Ivalice. Might as well be in the middle of battle!



A few notes before we being: this is the best map I could find that properly labels both the locations and various
cities that we encounter in Ivalice. This map uses the names given out in the PSP War of the Lions remake, so some
of the names (well, dang near all of them) are slightly different. There's several locations here that we don't have
access to, but nothing here is likely to be a spoiler.

Ivalice is divided into six areas:

Gallionne: Duke Larg lives and rules here in Igros Castle (Eagrose in WotL). As mentioned way back at the beginning of
the LP, he is represented by the White Lion, and protected by the Hokuten Knights.

Fovoham: Formerly ruled by Duke Barinten, before he was tossed off the roof of his own castle. He never really sided
with either Larg or Goltana, at least not as far as the game discusses (to my knowledge).

Lesalia: This is the area contains the capital (Lesalia itself) as well as Bervenia, where St. Ajora (you might have heard
his name before) was born. The King/Queen lives here, although currently there isn't one (hence the war to determine
who it will be).

Zeltennia: Where Goltana rules. We're headed into this territory to try and talk to Delita. Goltana is represented by the Black
Lion, and is protected by the Nanten Knights.

Limberry: Ruled by Marquis Elmdor, who we saved, heard was killed, and then chased away. Not a popular vacation
destination. Elmdor is on Goltana's side.

Lionel: Formerly ruled by Count Draclau before we killed him. He can be tentatively considered to be on Goltana's side,
except he was killed before the Lions' War actually broke out.

Don't think of the named people above as kings/presidents/etc., they're the aristocracy basically. Still, we've interacted
with most of the above. We're dealing with powerful people here guys!

There is a seventh area that the Murond Glabados Church controls, known as Mullonde. This area used to be above
ground, until a mysterious disaster (which is linked to St. Ajora, see the Germonik Scriptures for more info) sank it.

To the east lies Ordallia, which is pictured to the east. We haven't heard too much about the Fifty Years' War since
Chapter 1 (having been supplanted by the Lion War) but that's the country that Ivalice was fighting.



We're still beating and (will soon be) pillaging Meliadoul's possessions. In actuality, I beat Meliadoul too fast. Well,
rather, I beat her while she was incapacitated! This prevented three conversations between her and Ramza from
triggering. I realized this after I tested the battle again to make sure Meliadoul only had her armor-breaking skill. I
present the trio below, as per Tsogtsaihan Baatar's FFT Game Script minus the fan-fiction:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Ramza: Wait! Izlude, I didn't kill him! Do you know what
happened at Riovanes? That wasn't the doing of any
human! Izlude was killed by Lucavi!

Meliadoul: Lucavi!? Lucavi appeared and killed my
brother!? Ha, ha! That's pretty wild! Can't you come up
with a better lie than that?

Ramza: You're the same as Izlude! You don't know the
truth! You don't realize you're just pathetic puppets,
dancing for the bad guys!! The stones aren't just objects
of faith, but have 'power' to work miracles! That 'power' is
different for each side, but they're using it for evil! Wake
up, Meliadoul!! Vormav's deceiving you!

Meliadoul: You expect me to believe that? Ridiculous!!
Vormav is our father!!

Ramza: !!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Meliadoul: My brother really wanted to save this rotten
kingdom! Our plans may be violent... but 'reform' requires
'pain'! If there's no 'pain', there's no true 'reform'!! A baby
like you who can't even deal with your own fate can never
change the world!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Ramza: I beg you! Please trust me! I didn't kill your
brother! I'm not the one you want to fight! Lucavi exists!
Your father is no longer human! He's a devil, possessed by
Lucavi!!

Meliadoul: Cut it out, Ramza!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We can talk more about Meliadoul later, but I must say that she's one of my favorite FFT characters. Her design
is pretty interesting, a combination of the same uniform her brother wore plus a habit, and her motivation for wanting
to kill Ramza is kind of believable. Who would believe that her father is actually a fairy tale demon who murdered his
son?

Regardless, she goes down like a chump, despite only really using three characters to beat the entire enemy force. A
punch from Sissie knocks Meliadoul out, and the battle is ended! We nabbed two very good items and a somewhat
expensive skill we'll never use out of it!

Jessica's adventures calculating Time (Magic) have gotten me worried. She's on the cups of absolute power! It just
feels so wrong. The solution (I think) is to show off how easily Calculators can solo battles. Maybe.

Oh, well, see you next time!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Bonus Money: 19,300 Gil
War Trophies: Jade Armlet, Remedy x2

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

to be continued...

one of the best things about fft wotl is that mighty sword is no longer forced to be used on people with proper equipment.

I really wanted to use the storyline characters in WotL, and I did in a few cases, but by the time I recruited Meliadoul my party was pretty much done.

Mel is one of my favorite characters, Thunder Gods be damned, and her design is indeed excellent. Easily outdoes Agrias at that whole "Lady of War" theme, and that's saying something --heck, she looks like an emerald-clad Darth Vader. And like shivam says...

And it also works on monsters! I tend to think of the Mighty Sword skills as breaking the appropriate part of the enemy's anatomy instead of measly pieces of armor. But it's such a shame that MS skills got renamed for WotL "Shellbust Stab" sounds a lot cooler than "Crush Armor."

Now, consider a 16 character limit (though with two fewer extra specials, no absolutely broken Balthier) like in the original instead of the 32 you can get in WotL. You'd have been lucky to have space to add Meliadoul long enough to loot her gear. The game throes a metric tonne of specials at you from the end of Chapter Three to the end of the game, especially if you do the side quests.

I really like Meliadoul's look too. I have to track down the illustrations of the characters from my Golden Age of Ivilace pen and paper game, the Divine Knight was pretty good and naturally wore something very similar. For now I'll just link something awesome from another thread instead:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU0rSSzCktM

yesssssssssssssssss

I just wanted to pop in, I've played up to the final series of battles in War of The Lions.

I have a character, Sarra, who I made into the Black Mage/Samurai build you recommended and it is amazing. Like, Orlandu magnitudes of amazing. She has blade grasp at 97%, and when she draws a sword it does ~400-550 damage (22 MA at lvl 50 + Arcane power), usually killing 2-4 enemies per turn. I equipped her with the new lipstick item that Mustadio gifted Agrias (I guess we finally know what Agrias' Balm is. Ashley Riot using ancient lipstick, we should have known.) for the auto-protect-shell-haste.

Sounds like she's ready to enter Rendezvous Missions and get slaughtered pecked to death Choco Meteored Choco Balled to have a lot of fun with Teioh!

FUCK teioh. FUCK that goddamned chicken.

(hic)

I always imagined it destroyed their equipment, and the shrapnel caused the damage. Cloth shrapnel too, somehow...

But how will it run?

Eddie, I think you made a mistake describing who rules which area in your last post. You mention Larg twice and describe him as both the white and black lions. I think you just accidentally typed Larg instead of Goltanna for one of them.