HSUP B TCELES - Let's Play FF1! Again!

Sounds like how I played through FF8, as long as Zells fists also count as pointy things.

Vanish/Doom is a bug because it makes instant death work in a Final Fantasy game. I can't comment on lvl5 death though, I'm too biased.

The classiest way to kill a boss is probably to have a magic stat so high that your damage loops around, and kill him with hundreds of shots of Ultima and Merton (meltdown, I know).

What are you guys talking about?

The classiest way to kill a boss is to stun, poison, silence, and mp drain them, reducing them to shivering wrecks you can kill at your leisure.

Alternatively, GOBLIN PAUNCH!

Except that it bypassed instant death immunity, which obviously was not an intended effect. Ergo, bug.

Does it? I always used X-Zone on undead and such instead of Doom.

Anyway, Atomos is vulnerable to Sleep. Magic damage doesn't break Sleep. He's triple gimmicky.

But... but... Doomgaze

I always had a soft spot for killing the CoD in FF3 in one shot by Boosting and Hasting a Black Belt/Master/Karateka/Engrishman.

Bah. Next you'll tell us that that's an ordinary well in Coneria, too. Or that the fountains are good only to wash our face.

Y-you mean that the Light Warriors aren't the middle-aged, world-weary travelers we've always pictured them as, but barely pubescent teens with feminine faces and feathered hair? N-nooo! Square! Why can't you let us have just this one?

Maybe she was expecting a bunch of decrepit old men?

That's not a good reason. She still has a mouth.

*rimshot*

It's not an issue with Dawn; it goes back to the soundtrack to the original version of the game.


The washed-out, down-scaled port of a beautiful PlayStation game still beats the straight port of a WonderSwan Color game, naturally.

In FF1NES, I always liked using savestate abuse to get the 1 in 256 chance that Instant Death works on Chaos.

Won't drop Bahamut, because X-Zone nullifies "last shot"-type moves. Like the one Doomgaze uses to get Bahamut.

Or so I have read. I'm stuck in FF6 because I went straight to the Dreamscape as soon as I got Cyan.

At level 20-something.

Without X-Zone to beat Wrexsoul.

Or Fenrir.

T_T

Is there not a way to exit from there? I usually waited to go there because I don't really like Cyan, so I tend to do his stuff later when I have a strong support party (always forgetting that you don't actually play as Cyan there...).

No.

No there is not.

Well, the GOOD news is that, in FF6, when you die, you get to keep all your experience and (I think) items. EVENTUALLY you will win.

And it's not like Wrexsoul is difficult without X-Zone.

This is how my first playthrough of FFVI ended.
Took me five years to finish that game.

♪♪ Chaos Shrine ♪♪

Behind Atomos, of course, is another warp tile leading to the surface. And behind that are the stairs down. Because, friends, Lifespring Grotto is only halfway done.


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

B11 is the lowest we've ever been in a superdungeon, so the monsters start getting a little bit harder. For example, this pretty-beefy-for-Percy hit against this palette swapped Killer Shark isn't enough to defeat it! On the other hand, we can now cast Flare at will, so maybe it's a case of too little, too late.

Zach and Ika are low on HP because that's how they came out of the Atomos fight. (Zach was dead, Ika was in critical.) I fed each of them a few Potions, which is all they really need. Ika's use of the Healing Staff should be sufficient to get them back to tip-top shape by the time we get to the bottom of the dungeon.


♪♪ Menu Screen ♪♪

One of the "good" treasures here is a dagger Percy could put to use if he weren't already using something better. I'm pretty sure I did equip the Orichalcum in both my Thief ✗4 and Black Mage x4 games, though.

Also on this floor was an Ether, 5000 gil and another Silver Apple and Mind Plus for Ika... but I'm kind of getting tired of showing screenshots of those things. Plus they're all starting to run together in my head anyway. I played this weeks ago and don't even know what floor my screenshots are on anymore, to tell you the truth. One of the water levels. Probably.


♪♪ Flying Fortress ♪♪

Wait, B13? Oh, okay. As you can see, Lifespring Grotto has a few floors ripped out of the Flying Fortress, too.

I have opinions about the "new" Flying Fortress, but I think I'll save them until I'm there for realz. The only treasure on this floor was a Red Curtain.


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

Seriously, this is what passes for a strong multi-target attack down here. Can you tell Zach is still un-Ribboned? I knew you could!


♪♪ Flying Fortress ♪♪

Flying Fortress levels don't have stairs, they have teleporters. Neat and futuristic!


♪♪ Matoya's Cave ♪♪

The next floor is--

--wait, what? What the hell?


Nothing but dozens and dozens of dancing girls! Some of them scold you...


...and some of them make FF9 references. Mostly though, they just serve to get in your way.


So what happens is, you fight your way through a whole row of spinny dancing ladies to get this virtually worthless treasure box. Then you have to elbow your way back, then through another row of dancy girls to get to the teleporter.


I'm getting pretty sick of watching you!


Oh god, there's more than one floor of this madness. In this section the girls spin endlessly while cycling around the middle path in a clockwise manner. So to get anywhere you have to step into one of the gaps in the line and just go with the flow.


Of course you get yelled at for that, too. (That treasure box is a pair of Hermes' Shoes.)

I dunno, First Dancing Lady. According to Second Dancing Lady it's a pretty time-consuming occupation. Killing monsters and looting treasure is far easier and much more rewarding.

Having slowly worked their way through the conga line from hell, Zach and his gang finally make it to the next teleporter, where--


Okay now this is just getting ridiculous. At least the actual for-real stairs are in sight this time. (They're in the bottom-right corner.)


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

Having been waylaid long enough by mermaids and dancing girls, the boys finally step into a gods-honest dungeon level, kill some nondescript bad guys and get a level up. Now they feel like MEN once again.


♪♪ Menu Screen ♪♪

Another weapon that might have been useful if we hadn't already cleared two superdungeons. In my opinion the random dungeon chest loot should be better than the guaranteed boss drops, not worse... but here we are.


♪♪ Dungeon ♪♪

After another featureless water level or two, the guys land in this sunken city. There's nothing of real interest on this map beyond its unique visuals, and you can't get into fights here. It's kinda cool the canoe gets some love way down here, I suppose


♪♪ Sunken Shrine ♪♪

Here's another Chaos Shrine level. This one is built with long vertical corridors and rooms, if for no reason other than to ensure maximum random encounter-age. The treasures here were a Lunar Curtain and another Feathered Cap.


♪♪ Dungeon ♪♪

The next level features Dark Bahamut and a huge room filled with wandering dragon monsters. In order to unlock the door he wants you to kill a certain number of his variously-colored disciples.


Of course all the differently-colored dragons look equally red on the map screen, so you can't tell who's who. The solution is to pretty much just keep murdering dragons until Dark Bahamut says it's okay to leave.

♪♪ Battle ♪♪

None of the types of dragons pose even the slightest bit of challenge. I couldn't even say with any authority which ones were in the original NES version and which are "new" to Dawn of Souls.


This one coughed up a level-up, at least!


♪♪ Dungeon ♪♪

Eventually Dark Bahamut gets bored with watching me kill his closest friends and companions and unlocks the door.


With one last ominous warning he sends us off to the stairs.


I'm sure whoever-this-guy-is will be every bit the pushover Gilgamesh and Atomos were. We're unstoppable at this point, right?


♪♪ Boss Battle A ♪♪

Uh... right...?


Right? Guys?

Guys?

♪♪ Game Over ♪♪

Huh. Well. Okay then.

What happened here was... uh... the bosses on the bottom floor of Lifespring Grotto are kinda sorta the hardest bosses in the whole game. In fact, I fought my way through the entirety of the dungeon knowing I probably wouldn't be able to kill either of the bosses on the bottom floor.

Of course, I also fought my way down there knowing that the bulk of the floors were either really short, or devoid of random encounters. So it's not like it was too much a waste of my time. Besides, there's another boss I can try my luck against!


♪♪ Boss Battle A ♪♪

Shinryu says he follows Omega, but in my experience he's actually the easier of the two for one simple reason: he has fewer multi-target attacks to pick from.


His physical attack stings like a mofo, though, so my front ranks waste no time in getting themselves Blinked as soon as physically possible.


As it happens, though, one of the multi-target attacks Shinryu's got is Flare. Which is like... heh. Pretty fucking powerful.


This isn't the first boss we've faced who's thrown Flare at us, though, so I'm confident with a few more tries I can nail this one down. See? Here's BlBelt stepping up to the plate like a trooper.


Ouch ouch ouch.

Okay, apparently the "wind BlBelt up and let him loose" strategy isn't gonna be enough for this fight. We need another layer here.

As it happens, I have enough Giant's Tonics for everone to drink one. This doubles everyone's max HP. If I can keep my buff-slingers alive long enough to see BlBelt into ultimate powerhouse mode, get his HP up above 900, and then suck down a Megalixer I might be in good enough shape to win.

It took a few tries, but eventually the chips fell in my favor and I got BlBelt exactly where I wanted him.


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

You cannot ask for a more fortuitous finish than that! It's actually not luck that BlBelt was the last man standing; it's just that everyone else focused on feeding him X Potions or Tempers as needed. Even after it was down to a fight to the finish BlBelt had to give his fists a rest for one round to drink.


♪♪ Chaos Shrine ♪♪

The reward for defeating Shinryu is some pretty bitchin' Knight equipment. Check this out!


♪♪ Menu Screen ♪♪

Bitchin' indeed, no? Zach was already damn hard to kill before; now he's a walking fortress.


♪♪ Chaos Shrine ♪♪

Once you kill the boss the door behind him locks. You have to do Lifespring Grotto twice in order to destroy both of them. Which is just as well, since I don't have any Giant's Tonics left and, even if I did, probably not a snowball's chance in hell of actually pwning Omega.

But don't worry. We'll be back. With mo' levels. And mo' gear. And it will be a beautiful fucking thing.


♪♪ Sailing Ship ♪♪

The whirlpool's behind us. We have one more crystal to light, and one more fiend to size up.

Next: "...masTER!... ...we have wated SO long..."

Damn, I always had this image of Shinryuu being this super boss and you just ruined it for me.

Then again, that image was mainly from my first playthrough of FF5, so meh.

Heh yeah Omega and Shinryuu were always a pain- I say keep the ragnarok as a permanent weapon for Zach- the only one that can pass it oughtta go to Ika so he can deal damage if he runs out of mana- or if ya don't want him to use mana at all- besides, Zach and Percy get almost equal superweps and BlBelt wouldn't use it anyways.

I've palyed many ff games, but omega is one person I've NEVER beaten.
(Usually cause I would quit after getting pwned too many times)

Funny story to keep this thread alive:

I've been doing a solo Thief run on DoS. I was about halfway through the Earthgift Shrine after beating Lich when my little brother Jason got ahold of my DS and erased the file.

So I started a new run, and the 3 dead WMs are all named JASON in his honor. Cody the thief just got Death'd by Astos. Again.

I beat DoS with FUKT a few weeks ago. Astos is the bottleneck.

Really? He wasn't even so bad once you got past Death.

As an aside, does anybody else think Thief's DoS sprite looks somehow... younger than the rest?

To go ridiculously in-depth on the characters' (approximate) ages and genders (in DoS):

Fighter: 20, Male
Thief: 12, Male
Monk: 30, Male
Red Mage: 40, Male
White Mage: 30, Female
Black Mage: Hell if I know

I think Thief looks so much younger because his clothes seem too big for him.